Reply #10: I LOVED having mine after Katrina.

[Maddy McCall]

We ate food as it thawed in the freezer, so we had meat pretty much for the first week.

We kept eggs and packs of bacon in the ice chest and had a big breakfast with pancakes, (mix, just add water) toast, eggs, bacon, and grits every morning. Mid afternoon, we always had our dinner--we ate rice and gravy (used the bacon drippings from the morning's bacon) and sometimes hamburger patties as the meat thawed in the freezer.

Did you know that you can buy hamburger meat precooked and sealed on the shelves at the grocer's? It's on the aisle with other canned meat. You can buy it unseasoned, or seasoned for tacos or Italian dishes. We ate plenty of that...I had stocked up on it before the 'cane.

And you can buy chunk chicken sealed in the same kind of bags.

By the second week, we were eating packaged stuff like Rice A Roni and canned veggies. We had bought some canned meat--stuff like canned hams, canned chicken and dumplings, Spam (fried, it isn't too bad), tuna, sardines (love them with onions on saltines), and even Chef Boyardee.

The camp stoves are GREAT. I have a Coleman--I bought 30 canisters of propane, and it took us through three weeks.

We fared better than most people. I'm an avid camper so the stuff that I take camping double-duties as emergency supplies...I have lanterns, a camp stove, a griddle, dutch ovens, etc.