How To Judge a Storm by Your Waffles..or a Goose

I blame Irene.

The extent of my cooking this week was comfort food like spaghetti and sausage and Shake and Bake chicken with Stove Top stuffing. Comfort food that I do not think you need a recipe for. So what to write about for Weekend Cooking?

All in all, we here along the Jersey coast made out fine in Hurricane Irene. Some trees are down, yards a mess, covered in leaves and acorns and branches and some flooding inland, some collapsed houses. But nowhere near the flooding you see in North Jersey and NY State and Vermont. And we were only without electric for less than a day, from Saturday night to Sunday evening.

Still, to start the day without a nice cup of tea...or even a glass of milk...since we could not open the frig and let out that cold air, is shocking. Ok, shocking is a bit strong. But in times of trouble, a warm meal and a cup of Joe can be comforting. Something, it seems, from an article in the Wall Street Journal, the people at the Waffle House restaurants understand. They have a very strong emergency plan to get their restaurants up and running as soon as possible after natural disasters, even if they are without electric.

“When a hurricane makes landfall, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency relies on a couple of metrics to assess its destructive power. First, there is the well-known Saffir-Simpson Wind Scale. Then there is what he calls the "Waffle House Index."
Green means the restaurant is serving a full menu, a signal that damage in an area is limited and the lights are on. Yellow means a limited menu, indicating power from a generator, at best, and low food supplies. Red means the restaurant is closed, a sign of severe damage in the area or unsafe conditions.
"If you get there and the Waffle House is closed?" FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate has said. "That's really bad. That's where you go to work."”

A recent study found the Waffle House is one of the four companies in the US, along with Wal-Mart, Home Depot and Lowe’s, with the best disaster plan, because when things go bad, what you need is a sausage biscuit and some coffee. Then off to Home Depot for plywood and a pump.
Sadly, we in NJ are not blessed with any Waffle Houses, the nearest being in PA and Delaware.

Here, I judge a natural disaster by the Wawa stores!

Wawa is a chain of convenience stores out of Wawa, Pennsylvania, that are open 24/7/365..except for some stores that close a few hours on Christmas Eve. Otherwise, they are always there, with coffee, made to order sandwiches, ATMs, gas, ice, cold beverages, ice cream...all the essentials of life.

And Sunday, after the storm, the Wawas were closed! Oh my, this must be serious!

If you look in the picture of the Wawa sign, you will see the sign for JoJo’s Italian Restaurant, which is next to my local Wawa and that had their electric back and were open by Sunday afternoon. And I was there, foraging for lunch and cold beverages, and watching people pull into the Wawa parking lot, hoping for a miracle, looking at a rare sight, a locked Wawa door, lights off.

Finally, by the time I got my food and was leaving JoJo’s, the Wawa next door was open and within minutes, their parking lot was filling up. Thank heavens, Wawa is open again and life is back to normal.

A 20oz. Earl Gray and a tuna hoagie with roasted peppers for me!

And maybe a bag of ice.

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This is my contribution this to this week's Weekend Cooking.
"Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend."
Be sure to check out the other entries this week. As always, hosted by Beth Fish Reads.

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