Y2K Food

Y2K Food

-or-

Hurricane Food

Towards the end of my decade cooking I was talking to my good (and beautiful) friend Andra and she suggested a Y2K themed meal. I don't know if she was serious or joking, but I kind of filed it in my brain as a good idea. I even did some research on it. I planned a menu and thought once we got settled into school routine I would plan it. Then we got a visit from Irma. 

I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that while we were sitting at home watching the wind and rain whip around us (and only then) did it dawn on me that Y2K food would also work for your hurricane emergency stash. Because the point is shelf stable and doesn't need electricity, right? So I'll just chalk that one of up to another one of my "duh" moments. 

I doubt I need to go into any walk down memory lane about Y2K. You probably all remember it. I think my kids were a little bit amazed at the thought that we thought (and by "we" I mean certain people. Jeremy and I were more relaxed in our approach) that the entire grid could go down. When I think about it now, we didn't depend on the internet and computers back then nearly as much as we do now. But seriously, the kids were kind of in shock we thought this was going to happen. I do remember calling my dad at midnight our time telling him that we still had electricity and going to bed.

MENU

Chowder

Garlic Cheese Biscuits

The idea with this was that basically everything that went into this was from a can and that you could cook this over a camp stove or fire. We can't do outdoor cooking here, and while we do have a camp stove...well...you all know I have a history with fire. So I DID make this on our electric stove top. And the chowder wasn't hard at all. Open 10 cans, throw it in a pot , let it cook for like an hour.

The biscuits I had zero faith in. In fact when I was getting ready to make these I kind of thought maybe I should just cheat and make regular biscuits that I know will turn out. But I thought the worse that could happen is we would have a fail to write about. 

The biscuits are a pretty basic dough. You use dry milk and water (oh, yeah, I did cheat here. I didn't have dry milk, I just used regular) and mash it into a cast iron skillet , top it with Velveeta cheese and Parmesan cheese. (That's another thing...I didn't use the parm in a green can. I'm kind of a cheese snob that way and I wasn't going to special buy it, So I used fresh grated over the top). That's actually kind of ironic..."cheese snob" and the thing is smothered in Velveeta.  You set this over low heat and let it cook on the stove top forever. I honestly think it probably took almost an hour. Obviously you don't get a nice browning, but cheese melts and the dough cooks through. 

Just a quick note if you decide to do this...cheese heats up like no other. I should have remembered this, but was quickly reminded.

I also was going to be good and not try it. But carbs are my kryptonite and I have very little will power. They were AMAZING. Now...again...maybe it's just because I was coming off almost a month of no sugar/gluten and most of this food was 'eh', but the kids also devoured them. So if we ever go camping, I know what I'm bringing.

The chowder tasted about like 10 cans of processed food mixed together and simmered for a while. It wasn't bad at all, I'm just a huge fan of fresh over canned. I will say this, I would be quite happy to be eating this meal during a hurricane if we lost electricity for any length of time.