EP Nightmares: Power Outage!!! - Kathy's Story - "Save the Stash!"

Hello fellow EPers! I have made it an entire month. I am pretty happy. This is hard work! (see my first post here)

San Deigo suffered a HUGE power outage yesterday afternoon, which continued through early this morning. San Diego likes to freak out. If it drizzles - the news goes crazy with reports of "Storm Watch 2011". It occasionally gets cold enough in the mountain areas to snow. And, of course, its a big deal. Take out power to the entire population of San Diego county (and we weren't the only ones...) on a unusually hot day- holy crap! Since we had no power, we had the ol' radio in our favor. This is after my husband searched high and low for enough D batteries to power it. Looks like we need to work on our 'emergency plan'.

My first thought when the power went out- damn SDGE! They cut off my A/C earlier in the day (I give permission for them to do this for a break on my bill), now I have NO POWER?! After about an hour, I remembered one important thing- THE STASH! Luckily, we invested in a deep freezer two weeks ago, but that didn't take away the fear that I would loose everything I had stashed away. I don't have a guess in volume but I have been freezing about 15-20 ounces a day for the past two weeks, and probably anywhere from 10-12 ounces a day prior to that. So, there's a decent amount.

I did the best thing I could- didn't open the freezer. I took my current fresh supply that I would be using today and wedged it in between mixed veggies and chicken strips in the freezer. I put some in baggies to hopefully try and get it to stay as cold as possible. I took anything that was 'fresh' and placed in my little cooler bag with the ice pack that came with the pump. Annoying, yes. But, I knew that I would at least be able to feed Karly through the night and the next day. I also have a battery pack for the pump, which helped.

The power finally came back on sometime between 12:30 am and 2 am when we both work up to an unhappy baby. Luckily, she drank lukewarm milk, but she did complain. Hubby ran outside to turn us back on. And, I ran right to the freezer- it was all okay! The stuff in the upper 'basket' had some slight condensation on it, but the milk was solid. I decided to go ahead and use some of that today, just in case. I'll carefully weed through the rest. I am thankful I am only throwing away some regular groceries from the fridge and NOT the liquid gold!