Hurricane Irene Survival

Hurricane Prep:
Thursday, on my way to work, I stopped and got 4 cases of water, tuna, bread, granola bars, a bag of apples, and canned chicken to add to my Hurricane pantry.  Friday I had to go to two different Ace Hardware stores to find the lantern battery that I needed and batteries.  And then I spent the rest of the day doing laundry and baking cookies.  I scrubbed down both tubs, because I thought I would end up filling them with water right before the storm hit us---but I ended up just filling a 2.5 bushel tub of water.  Because we knew the storm was coming, I didn't do my normal grocery restocking so there were only a few perishables in the fridge.
During the Hurricane:
We woke up to rain that had started sometime in the middle of the night.  The wind picked up around noon.  I ended up finishing my laundry and we tried to eat the leftovers up and watch movies while we hunkered down. Our power went out around 4:00pm on Sat.  I did get my treadmill workout in before the power cut out :)  I thought the worst of it would be past us by 6:00pm but the wind seemed to pick up after dark.  The house was taking a beating until well after 1:00 am.  We did hear a terrible scraping sound against our window...I thought it was a tree branch, but it ended up being the window screen coming off.  It managed to hit the Subaru and ended up in the neighbors yard along with Andrea's window screen.
After the Hurricane:
Lost two window screens and had one leaky window to fix and the ridge vent on the roof over the garage peeled up. On Monday, I went to work to charge our phones, and bought some ice on the way home to restock the coolers. The freezer was 40 degrees that morning and everything was thawing so we moved it to coolers.  I borrowed a Coleman Max cooler from a friend at work....and that cooler is awesome.  We did play some Uno, and BS (card game that Andrea picked up in IN).  But the games only lasted about a day and then everyone was just grumpy and frustrated.  Both of the kids, played with all the younger neighbors.  They did kickball, water guns, and sidewalk chalk. Neighbors were circled in lawn chairs making the best of it.   I tried to curl my hair with foam rollers overnight---not so cute.  I even hand washed some towels because they were getting quite smelly.  That was a total body workout.  Weds Andi and I headed to the library to charge our phones, while we were there our power kicked on.   During the whole time I was very creative.  We only had our grill to cook with.  I managed to bake some bread roll dough that was thawed from the freezer.  I even used up the last of the cream cheese, sour cream, some Parmesan and spinach to make a spinach dip that we cooked in a cake pan on the grill.  We even made foil  pouches to roast the thawed out cauliflower and other veggies.  We made foil dinners out of a bag of snap peas and carrots, cube steaks and cream of mushroom.  We had kielbasa to add to the baked rolls for breakfast sandwiches.  I marinated pork chops in a tangy mustard ranch marinade.  We made orange juice from the thawed concentrate to go with dinner one night and then I used the rest mixed with Worcestershire sauce to marinade a London Broil.  I still have one London Broil to cook tomorrow night for fajitas or something.  We are eating lots of leftover grilled food now that the power is back on. We only lost less than a half  a gallon of milk and some onions that I had prechopped.  I kept all my vinegar based condiments and tried to use up the other salad dressing first.  Making homemade cookies was a lifesaver on the comfort food front.  I do wish I had more chocolate in the house....a Hershey bar would have hit the spot.