a peek inside the fishbowl

I wasn’t. But I am now.

A few weeks ago a lovely lady from Public Safety Canada contacted me about a new advertising campaign regarding emergency preparedness.

Here in Canada, we’ve experienced a number of natural disasters like ice storms, major floods and severe hurricanes in recent years, and it appears that severe weather events are on the rise.

I can think of two events which caught our family underprepared. (1) the Great Ice Storm of ’98 and (2) the Northeast Blackout of 2003, which affected an estimated 10 million people in the Canadian province of Ontario and 45 million people in eight U.S. states. (via wikipedia)

Research shows that many Canadians may not have the ability to sustain themselves in an emergency. Only eight per cent of Canadians say they are prepared.

The idea behind the ad campaign is to ensure that people are prepared for a range of emergencies. By having an emergency kit with food, water, radio, and flashlight, an emergency can be reduced to an inconvenience rather than a hardship. And most importantly, resources can be freed up for those in urgent need.

Until today our emergency preparedness consisted of these things:

• Whatever groceries we had on hand (minimal, considering we don’t have a lot of storage. Heck, we don’t even have a proper pantry. After 18 hours we’d be eating icing sugar.)
• A (top notch) first aid kit we keep in the linen closet
• A small fire extinguisher in the kitchen and one in the basement.
• One camping lantern (used with little candles) and flashlights (one larger battery-operated, one hand-cranked, but who knows where they are right now.)
• A hand-crank radio (I think it’s in the closet)

Public Safety lady sent me two emergency preparedness kits. It gave me a whole new understanding of what it means to be prepared. I was missing matches, Swiss-army knife, biohazard bags, glow sticks, a whistle, work gloves … and more. It wasn’t comforting to picture myself frantically feeling around for candles and matches if the lights ever went out.

Now I have all of these things I will add a few more – like extra keys, photocopies of our important documents, garbage bags, some old clothes, some cash, a duh, a CAN OPENER. Thankfully, the kit I received came with a large backpack, so I can store all of our things in one bright can’t-miss-it kind of place.

The only thing I’m not prepared for now is (a) anything wintry (how would I heat my home for 72 hours?) and (b) alien attack.

I am acutely aware of the fact that we need to clear a shelf in the basement and stock up on some non-perishables. I think $150 worth of water and dry goods should buy us a decent food supply for a family of four:

• water (two litres of water per person per day)
• canned goods and other non-perishables i.e. peanut butter.
• dry milk etc.

It also occurs to me that packaged/dry camping food (i.e stews and bannock) might be useful in this situation too.

The Government of Canada has put together a helpful website with all kinds of emergency preparedness info. I urge you to check it out. Do note that the GoC doesn’t distribute emergency preparedness kits, but others do. The Canadian Red Cross kit is available at www.redcross.ca. A St. John Ambulance/Salvation Army emergency kit is available at www.sja.ca. You can buy an emergency kit in many stores across Canada or assemble your own. Start here to find out what you need.

That being said, I have a deluxe St. John Ambulance/Salvation Army emergency kit available to give away to one Ottawa-area reader. Postal rates being what they are I would rather not snail mail it out, sorry. If you’re interested, let me know in the comments below. But first tell me (because I’d like to know) do you know where your flashlight is right now? :) How prepared are you?

I’ll do a random draw and arrange drop off (or pick up) with the winner.

ETA: Holy smokes. You guys are less prepared than I thought. :)
I forgot to mention when I’d do the draw. Let’s say deadline for entry is Thursday April 2, 2009. I’ll do the draw on Friday April 3rd. 

ETA March 29:  If you’re interested in the giveaway please make sure you (a) let me know you’re interested in the giveaway and (b) provide a valid email address. Thank you! :)

Before I write out the recipe, please take a moment to behold the healthy goodness:

I’ve been on a soup kick lately, especially since I discovered a few things:

• Chicken stock is easy to make.
• Homemade soup can be chock full o’good things. It is a vehicle for vegetables.
• Soup takes the edge off my hunger and when I eat a bowl around 4:00 I don’t eat as much for dinner.
• Soup is good.

This recipe isn’t even a real recipe. It is as easy as it gets. Marla mentioned it in a past post and I only got to trying it Monday at 11:55 a.m., when I was starving and discovered we’d pretty much run out of food. The whole thing took less than ten minutes.

I’m rewriting it here for easy reference.

Marla’s Black Bean Soup

• Open one can of black beans, rinse under cold running water, dump into food processor
• Add half a jar of salsa (I used a mild salsa from Farm Boy)
• Whir until unrecognizable
• Add to medium-sized pot, along with enough vegetable broth to get a texture that looks good to you. (I added a bit of water too.)
• Heat until hot.

It’s PRACTICALLY CALORIE-FREE.

That is, um, until you add the cheese. :)

I dressed mine up with a dollop of sour cream, shredded cheese, and green onions. It would have also been very good with a squirt of lime, and some chopped cilantro and avocado, and maybe some grilled corn.

Who knew healthy eating could taste so good?

Awhile back I was musing aloud about our weekly family pottery class. I was feeling a little sorry for myself because my creativity seemed to have left me just as I signed us up for the class.

Tonight is the final class and I have to say, I’m kind of glad it’s ending.

Emma and Sarah have really enjoyed themselves. But I found it a struggle.

Early on I realized why. I expected my finished projects to improve after baking, much like when I bake bread. Bread starts out like looking like a lump of dough, but usually comes out of the oven looking nice. The loaf will rise and fill out, smoothing gaps and taking on a happy golden colour. But this doesn’t happen with clay. You get exactly what you put in (unless we’re talking about the glazing process, which is whole other ball of wax). I got over this delusion fairly quickly.

I liked the feeling of working with clay, sticking my fingers in there and rolling and squishing and tugging it into place. The girls were happy making whatever struck them, and their imaginations took them to wonderful creative places. They made a lot of fairy furniture, a hedgehog-shaped toothpick holder, pinch pots of all shapes and sizes … they were able to let go.

For me, looking at that hunk of clay was like staring at a blank screen and not knowing what to write.

The instructor was good. She saw the girls churning out knick-knack upon knick-knack (Sarah easily made a half-dozen things every class) and encouraged us to build a family project instead, something we could use, and be proud of. So the three of us made a big shallow serving bowl. It was fired last week so we’ll see how that turned out. But we have dozens of other little things which have no home. Right now they’re all displayed on our living room mantle. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with them. Build a shelf?

I do have a pretty cool sushi plate and soy sauce bowl.

At the end of almost every class I made myself a little mushroom (like the two pictured above). Those little things were the most satisfying projects I made. If I could make mushrooms all day long I would sign up again.

I’m trying to pin down my feelings about why I wasn’t able to enjoy myself and am not arriving at any satisfactory conclusions. Maybe it was because I expected to be good at it right off the bat. Maybe it was because I expected my projects to look perfect and was disappointed when they didn’t. That might be it.