Stuck Home for Three Days and Glad the Food Kit Was Already Packed

The ice started late on a Tuesday afternoon this past January, and by six the power was gone. I am Marlene Tolliver. I am sixty-one, retired after thirty years carrying mail on one rural route, and I live in a one-story farmhouse at the end of a gravel road in the hills of middle Tennessee. Hollis and I stayed put. The road iced over and we ate supper that night from the refrigerator like anybody would.

By Wednesday evening I had a box off the hall closet shelf. It was one of two 4Patriots 72-Hour Survival Food Kits we bought last November, one for me and one for Hollis. I had never opened either one. That night I took the first kit to the kitchen, set the two-burner propane camp stove on the back porch where it belongs, and made the first hot meal we had eaten since the power went out.

The kit is not a full pantry, and I want to be plain about that. It needs water and it needs heat. The label says to add boiling water and simmer, about fifteen minutes start to finish. On the porch that meant boiling water on one burner, stirring in the food, and letting it simmer with the lid on, cold air coming under the porch roof, kitchen matches in my pocket because I had let the camp stove lighter go missing. That was one of the things that went wrong that week. It was a nuisance, not a crisis.

Each kit is twenty servings, about 4,800 calories total, roughly 1,600 a day. The label calls that a 72-hour kit. I call it light, and I would say the same to anybody. We ate six meals from that one kit, Wednesday evening through Friday midday. We never opened the second kit. It went back on the shelf when the power came back.

The meals we had were sweet oatmeal, mac and cheese, and creamy rice and vegetable. Hollis said the mac and cheese was fine. He said the oatmeal was too sweet, and he was right, but I ate mine. The kit is vegetarian, which suits us. The packaging is triple-layer Mylar, the kind meant to keep heat, air and moisture away from the food. The listing says best below 75 degrees, and our hall closet is an inside closet in a heated house, so that is where they live.

Six meals from one kit, two people, three days without power. We never opened the second kit.

What I liked best was not the food. It was that the decision was already made. When the power goes out, you are not at your sharpest. You are worried about the road, the water, the refrigerator, and whether the phone will work. Having a box on the shelf that says 72-hour kit takes one question off the table. I did not have to invent a meal from a can and a box of crackers. I boiled water and waited.

What I did not like is the water. The kit does not come with water. It needs water for cooking, and you need drinking water besides. I am not saying the 4Patriots kit is a full pantry. We keep six gallons of bottled water in the hall closet, and we had about two left at the end. That is not a lot for two people. If you buy a kit like this, count the water first. Count it for drinking and count it for cooking.

Another thing I would tell you is that 1,600 calories a day is not a lot. It got us through. We were not hauling wood or walking a route. We were sitting in the den with the wood stove holding about 62 degrees, sleeping there the last two nights because the bedrooms were colder. If you are splitting a kit between two grown people, add a can of this or a jar of that from your pantry. We keep a canned pantry and a hand can opener, and I would not be without either.

The last thing is the heat source. The kit says add boiling water and simmer. That means a camp stove, a grill, or a working range. Ours is a two-burner propane camp stove, and it stays outside on the back porch. I do not care how cold it is. A camp stove indoors can kill you. We used one propane cylinder and part of a second over those three days. I had two on hand, and that was enough.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

I would tell you to buy the food before you need it, not during the storm. I would tell you to open one kit on a normal night and cook a meal from it, so you know what fifteen minutes feels like and whether your people will eat it. I would tell you to store water first and then buy the kit. And I would tell you that a 72-hour kit is a bridge, not a plan. The 4Patriots kit got us from Wednesday evening to Friday noon. That is exactly what it says on the box. If the road had stayed iced another three days, we would have been eating from the canned pantry and boiling water on the porch, and I would have been glad for both.