The Coffee House

[limr38 8]

Honestly, I don't know which is worse - no power in the summer or no power in the winter. Either extreme can be deadly, rather than just uncomfortable or inconvenient.

Personally, I would take winter power outages any day of the week over summer outages. Yes, in extreme situations, both cases can be dangerous and deadly. But in most situations, especially if it's just a few hours, it's much easier to stay warm than to cool off, even without a generator. If the power stays out long enough for the heat to go out of the house, there are ways to keep drafts from coming in and to insulate windows, there are clothes and blankets to keep you warm, and even candles can warm up a room (with all the normal caveats of not leaving them unattended.) If you've got a gas grill, you can melt and boil snow for drinking water or to use for washing or flushing the toilet (for those not on a municipal water system.) And food will keep longer, especially if it's still cold enough to keep food in a cooler outside away from the critters.

But in the summer - there's only so much lying around, trying not to move that a person can do to keep cool. Keeping the windows open can help, but if it's hot and muggy, then it's not going to help much, especially if there's no breeze. And food spoils much faster, nothing really to do about that.

In my experience, the hardest thing about power outages in any weather is always water. For most of my life, I've lived in places with a well and a septic system. Water isn't pumped from the well so no drinking, washing, or flushing toilets. Whether winter or summer, I usually fill the bathtub with water before a big storm that might knock out power. In the winter, I use it to flush or wash and can boil it on the grill for drinking water. If there's snow, I can supplement that water if the power stays out long enough. In the summer, I also do all those things (except for the snow, of course) as well as use it to take a dip to cool off.

 

[jeffashman18 3]

I keep telling myself I need to get a backup power supply for my aquarium, because an extended outage will result in temps rising and lack of oxygenation, which will kill off the ecosystem pretty quickly. A whole house Generac would be ideal, but those cost a bit.

 

[CherylL2]

Rough night Tuesday night, high winds knocked out power around 7. Didn't get it restored till 3:30 this morning. Had generator running to refrigerator and deep freeze, but no a/c Guess I should consider myself lucky as there were still close to a million customers in the central and southern part of the state without power, Wednesday morning.

Spent most of the day yesterday trying to recover. Hoping today is better

EDIT: Just checked the outage map, still 688 customers without power from the storm and another 178 they don't have a clue when repairs will be made because of damage. Would suck to be them in this heat!!!!!!!!!!

Wow, you have had a lot of storms your way. We've had a few the past week and oddly missed us each time. The other day the storm split in two when it crossed the river. It went just north of us and south of us.

 

[SquarePeg44 6]

We are lucky to be on the same grid as a hospital that is about a mile away so any outages seem to get resolved very quickly. Of course I’ve just jinxed us by typing that…

been mostly rain this summer but not lot of wind or lightning around here. North of us in NH and VT is where all the issues are this summer.

 

[smoke665]

I keep telling myself I need to get a backup power supply for my aquarium, because an extended outage will result in temps rising and lack of oxygenation, which will kill off the ecosystem pretty quickly. A whole house Generac would be ideal, but those cost a bit.

The last quote we got, about a year ago, a whole house unit for our house was about 12k installed. About the time we were ready to pull the trigger, the number of outages dropped.

@CherylL we've had an unusually stormy year. The odd thing is the weather patterns are different this year. We normally have storms moving in from the SW. This year they're coming down from the North. Not as many tornadoes, but they create some strong straight line winds.

 

[jeffashman18 3]

We are lucky to be on the same grid as a hospital that is about a mile away so any outages seem to get resolved very quickly. Of course I’ve just jinxed us by typing that…

been mostly rain this summer but not lot of wind or lightning around here. North of us in NH and VT is where all the issues are this summer.

We have a similar experience. We are on the same grid as a water pump station, and any outages we've had don't last very long. Back during the winter of hell that took out a huge chunk of the Texas power grid, we never lost power or natural gas supply to the house, so we were very fortunate.

 

[smoke665]

We are on the same grid as a water pump station, and any outages we've had don't last very long

You are lucky, we're on a branch line that serves 64 residential customers, so we are at the bottom of the priority list. I was afraid we'd lose power again this evening as yet another wave came in from the North. We survived it this time but close to 5000 in our immediate area weren't so lucky. Most are showing back online in the next couple hours, but there's 500 or so that won't be back on till tomorrow evening. More weather/wind forecast for in the morning. Beginning to feel like we're in one of those "end of time" sci-fi movies.

 

[snowbear125 56]

The power has been fine, here. There is a water main break down the street but so far, we still have the wet stuff.

 

[limr38 8]

Just hosted my book club. It was a very small group tonight, which is fine. We read "Gertrude and Alice" - a biography of the relationship between Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. I made a few recipes from Alice's cookbook - nothing elaborate but quite good. Some potatoes with truffle oil and smoked sea salt, and an eggplant/tomato dish. I also salvaged some peaches that turned out to be quite mealy by searing them in coconut oil in a cast iron grill pan, then adding red wine and cinnamon and letting them simmer for a little while. It's a Portuguese dessert and it came out really well.

The most shocking thing was that Zelda came strolling out in the middle of it, even walked up to sniff one of the women before she skittered away, and then started yelling at me to give her a squeezy treat. She's never been as skittish as Mrs. Parker but she would always disappear when anyone other than me or Buzz were around. But twice now, she's come out into the main living/dining area when I had company over - tonight and a few weeks ago when I made dinner for the friends who often come feed the girls when we're away.

 

[jeffashman18 3]

Just hosted my book club. It was a very small group tonight, which is fine. We read "Gertrude and Alice" - a biography of the relationship between Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. I made a few recipes from Alice's cookbook - nothing elaborate but quite good. Some potatoes with truffle oil and smoked sea salt, and an eggplant/tomato dish. I also salvaged some peaches that turned out to be quite mealy by searing them in coconut oil in a cast iron grill pan, then adding red wine and cinnamon and letting them simmer for a little while. It's a Portuguese dessert and it came out really well.

The most shocking thing was that Zelda came strolling out in the middle of it, even walked up to sniff one of the women before she skittered away, and then started yelling at me to give her a squeezy treat. She's never been as skittish as Mrs. Parker but she would always disappear when anyone other than me or Buzz were around. But twice now, she's come out into the main living/dining area when I had company over - tonight and a few weeks ago when I made dinner for the friends who often come feed the girls when we're away.

Ok, red wine, or port? Now I'm going to have to experiment!

 

[limr38 8]

Ok, red wine, or port? Now I'm going to have to experiment!

Table wine. Grilling the peaches already brings out the natural sugars so it doesn't need the sweetness of the port. I cut the peaches in quarters because they were probably too big (thus the mealiness) but you can cut them in half, grill them skin side up, and then put about a cup or so of wine - enough to half cover the peaches - and let it simmer until peaches are soft. At that point, you can pull the skins off if you want. I left them on because I like the skin, but the original recipe calls for blanching the peaches before cooking to get the skins off. I can't be bothered with that step because I know I can pull them off if I want to after they've been simmering. The recipe calls for adding cinnamon sticks with the wine, but I was in a rush and didn't feel like digging into my spices stash for the sticks, so I just used powdered cinnamon on top of the peaches and then basted them in the wine to distribute the spice more evenly. You can serve it either hot or cold.

 

[limr38 8]

Of course, I had Portuguese wine on hand

 

[jeffashman18 3]

Table wine. Grilling the peaches already brings out the natural sugars so it doesn't need the sweetness of the port. I cut the peaches in quarters because they were probably too big (thus the mealiness) but you can cut them in half, grill them skin side up, and then put about a cup or so of wine - enough to half cover the peaches - and let it simmer until peaches are soft. At that point, you can pull the skins off if you want. I left them on because I like the skin, but the original recipe calls for blanching the peaches before cooking to get the skins off. I can't be bothered with that step because I know I can pull them off if I want to after they've been simmering. The recipe calls for adding cinnamon sticks with the wine, but I was in a rush and didn't feel like digging into my spices stash for the sticks, so I just used powdered cinnamon on top of the peaches and then basted them in the wine to distribute the spice more evenly. You can serve it either hot or cold.

Now I have this crazy idea in my head of trying a Porto-Southern fusion dessert... a porto peach cobbler... it's worth a try...

 

[limr38 8]

Now I have this crazy idea in my head of trying a Porto-Southern fusion dessert... a porto peach cobbler... it's worth a try...

Definitely give it a try! It sounds yummy!

 

[SquarePeg44 6]

been mostly rain this summer but not lot of wind or lightning around here.

Well I totally jinxed it - we had a crazy lightning storm here last night that lasted for hours! I was at a friend’s and needed to get home so I had no choice but to go out in it. I seriously thought I was about to get hit. A huge clap of thunder and crazy close flash happened right above me as I was going to my car. I screamed and literally ran and dove into the car. Scary stuff. Sat in my car for 10 minutes before I was calm enough to drive. And I don’t rattle easily. Rough ride home. Had to pull over 2x to let the torrential downpours pass.