Recipes After Disaster - Eating Without Electricity (Day 5)

This is the fifth in our blog series about recipes that you can easily prepare without power. Scroll down to the bottom of this blog for links to the other blogs in this series. 

Pantry Soup Warmed by Tea Candles
Today we’re going back to the pantry, and back to the tealight stove (mentioned in Day 2). After four days of power outage, you may have some canned soup in your pantry that you could warm up. But for now, let’s find a way to “soup up” some cans of single veggies.

I was pleased to find that our hoursehold's two colanders could be inverted and nested to hold our saucepan over some tealight flames. This worked, but I've since decided that it’s simpler to just put a cooling rack and pot over some tealights in an oven-safe container (fourth image shown). This last setup gets the pot slightly closer to the flames, and gives space for a few more tealights.
If the tealights are too far from the pot, they could be raised slighly (perhaps with some foil-lined cardboard, ala Provident Prepper). If they are so close that the bottom of the pot smothers them, then use a taller oven-safe container. What kind of tealight stove can you assemble from what you already have? Feel free to send us pictures!

Small collander holding tealights

Soup warming up on top of the large collander while the small collander holds lit tealights below

Large collander covering the small collander

A simpler stove. Tealights not shown, but they would sit under the pot, in the oven-safe glass container.

REad More

Now on to the recipe. As the name implies, this one can be pretty flexible, and you could sub in different veggies, proteins, and dried seasonings.

Day 5: Prep-cipe:
Whatever is in the pantry soup (Recipes for Disasters from EVCNB, p. 19)
This recipe serves 5. For the above pictures, I halved the recipe, and served 2 adults and one child.
Ingredients:
14 oz. can diced tomatoes (undrained)
11 oz. can corn (drained)
11 oz. can green beans (drained)
6 oz. can of canned chicken (or tuna, or white beans, if desired)
3 cups vegetable cocktail or tomato juice (I subbed some soup stock)
¼ tsp garlic powder
1 Tbsp olive oil
Salt to taste, depending on whether your canned goods come pre-salted.
1 cup croutons, crushed crackers, oyster crackers, or goldfish crackers (if desired)
Directions:

1. In a large pot (2 quart may suffice) combine all ingredients except croutons/crackers. 
2. Stir gently.
3. Heat lidded soup to serving temperature. 
4. Serve in bowls, and add croutons/crackers, if desired.

Note: My collander set-up (with only half the recipe) reached 100 F within 30 minutes. With the simpler stove, and a few more tealights, I’d expect it to take 30-40 minutes for the full recipe. As Provident Prepper mentions, a simple metal pot works best - cast iron is thicker and will take more time to heat.
Important: Tea candles may be stored indefinitely, and they are easy to use. Please remember that it's not safe to leave lit candles unattended.

Blog Series Links

Check out all of the blogs in the Recipes after a Disaster series: 

• Day 1 - Menu strategy: Eat Fresh Foods First
• Day 2 - Food Use & Storage Strategies
• Day 3 - Meals from Canned Foods
• Day 4 - Foraging Basics
• Day 5 - Pantry Soup Warmed by Tea Candles

Author

Lincoln Thomas, Newsletter Editor & Board Member, Neighbors Ready!