We had no choice but to eat our half-cooked dinner, which was asparagus in tomato sauce. I was nervous because I had never eaten raw asparagus before and didn't know if I could digest it. Luckily, I was fine. Prior experience has taught me that raw broccoli makes me sick to my stomach, though. Had we been cooking broccoli, I would have had to make other dinner plans that night.
This week I was rounding up materials for a camping trip I plan to take in a few weeks, and in doing so uncovered a pair of tiny emergency stoves I had bought for my emergency kit. It occurred to me that i ought to start testing out recipes for camping or short term power outage situations. Hence this thread.
Because I live in an apartment building where BBQs are banned, I have a feeling that my landlord might take some issue if I start cooking with fuel tablets or an actual fire with sticks and stuff. But candles aren't banned, so I want to see how much I can do with candles. They are cheap and easy to acquire and store, they don't have an offensive smell, the flame is more or less safe and controlled, and the sight of a box of candles or the smell of a candle being burned or extinguished is unlikely to attract anyone's attention in an apartment building.
I don't have experience with long-term situations like backpacking the back-country or surviving civil unrest or natural disasters, so I can't say how well the recipes would translate for that. I'm not even entirely sure yet how well they'd do for camping. But I'll post things here as I develop them, feedback is appreciated, and we can get the ball rolling.
First of all, I put a kettle with a pint of water over four tea lights. Unfortunately I didn't think to stick a thermometer in there, but I can tell you that even though the water didn't boil, it did become too hot to stick a finger into. So yesterday I heated a pint of water and made hot cocoa and oatmeal for breakfast.
Today I decided to try a pot of soup. Here are my results.
Udon Soup - Take one!
The set up:
IMG_20120530_015630 by Kayleen's Photos, on Flickr
An emergency stove set on a foil-lined baking sheet. Before lighting the candles, I checked to see if my pot would sit securely on the stove in this position. It did not, so I had to fold the sides into the second-position, which you will see in another photo. The pot sat more securely with the sides tilted in, and so I lit 5 tea-light candles in the emergency stove.
I proceeded to cook dinner with my window cracked open, my candle-extinguisher nearby, and I did not leave the pot unattended at all.
IMG_20120530_015642 by Kayleen's Photos, on Flickr
IMG_20120530_020001 by Kayleen's Photos, on Flickr
For ingredients, I used Dan-D Pak Vegetable Soup Flakes (a mixture of dehydrated potato, leek, onion, carrot, bell pepper, cabbage, celery, and god only knows what else), texturised vegetable soy protein chunks, dried shiitake mushrooms, a pack of udon noodles, a bouillon cube, sesame oil, and a packet of soy sauce.
I added everything except for the noodles, and let it sit for about 20 minutes with the lid on the pot, stirring occasionally.
IMG_20120530_021129 by Kayleen's Photos, on Flickr
The mixture did not break a boil (it barely got to a simmer), but when it became steaming hot, I added the udon noodles to the soup and let it sit until it became steaming hot again.
IMG_20120530_022759 by Kayleen's Photos, on Flickr
IMG_20120530_024356 by Kayleen's Photos, on Flickr
This made two bowls worth of soup, which is enough food for one or two people depending on your appetite.
My results with this soup are this: The broth needed a little something, possibly because I used low sodium. I had to continue seasoning with garlic powder, pepper, hot sauce, extra salt. You may need to adjust this to your taste.
The soy chunks have a texture and taste that takes getting used to. I will use them again but I will break them into pea-sized pieces next time.
The vacuum sealed packs of pre-cooked udon noodles heat up beautifully on the emergency stove. Because cooking over candles won't get the water to boil, it's important to use noodles like this, or quick-cooking noodles such as ramen or couscous. I would like to experiment with those vacuum-sealed packs of gnocchi.
If I somehow got snowed into my apartment for a couple of days and had to live on this soup (plus oatmeal and hot cocoa), I don't think I would mind too much.
I look forward to updating this thread with further culinary experiments.
lol, blazing saddles ftw. 
