It’s amazing how it gives you a different outlook to live without electricity for 28 hours – and over the Thanksgiving holiday. It’s not a hypothetical situation. I went through that in November, 2021, just a few months after I moved into my new home on the foothills of San Bernardino Mountains. That year was bone-dry and the forecast of high winds freaked out Southern California Edison, which promptly shut down power in my area night before the Thanksgiving Day.
As my turkey, dressed and ready to go into the oven, rotted away in a big room-temperature storage unit (a.k.a. the fridge with no electricity), I wondered how I’d even boil water for a cup of tea, let alone roasting a turkey, since even the gas stove needs electricity for ignition. But really – what if some disaster strikes and there’s no gas either? I had a trusty little charcoal grill, which is a hazard in those weather conditions. So, I wouldn’t have been able to cook my food before it went bad.
For Christmas, I got myself a portable solar generator and a gas grill. That made me feel a little better: I’d be able to keep the fridge running for several hours with the generator, and if it goes on longer, I can cook up the storm on my gas grill before food began to spoil. After that, I started looking into a small camp stove as well. That’s how I run into “Solo Stove.” It’s a very efficient little camp stove that burns wood and other solid fuel. I bought the largest of their camp stove line up, Solo Stove Campfire, to use in my backyard.
The test firing went great – I just picked up some leaves and twigs around the backyard, broke them into small pieces, and stacked them up inside the stove. It lit easily and got hot fast. Once the stove was hot, all I had to do was to throw in a couple of small wood pieces and in a few seconds, they would ignite by themselves. I kept the fire going for 10-15 minutes with literally a handful of wood pieces.
This morning, I decided to try cooking on Solo Stove for the first time. The “challenge” is to use charcoal briquettes to keep the fire going long enough to cook. On the menu:"Beet Greens and Pork Stew." There's no real significance there - just the ingredients I found in my fridge that need to cook for about an hour.
With charcoal briquettes in the bottom, getting the fire going was a real challenge. I realized that I had too many (five) pieces of charcoal, which blocked the airflow. After trying a few times in vain, I finally took three of them out and started over with just two. This time, it worked okay – still a little more effort than the test fire, but it was easy enough to get the fire hot enough to cook.
While the fire was burning really hot, I fried some chopped garlic and ground pork. In fact, it was so hot that I had to take my pot off the stove every once in a while to keep the pork from burning.
When the color of the meat turned, I checked the fire. It was still burning hot and two pieces of charcoal were starting to burn. So I added another charcoal.
At this point I started adding greens. The pot looks full but it welts quickly, so keep stirring and adding! Once the pork and greens are combined, I add enough water to cover. I also threw two more charcoal briquettes in. This cooled off the heat for the time being, which was just fine since I just wanted the pot to simmer.
And 45 minutes later....
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