03141 Design an alternative cooking system for your household

There's no harm in hoping for the best as long as you're prepared for the worst. — Stephen King, Different Seasons

Your assignment is to design an alternative cooking system that will work for your household in the event of an emergency that takes down the electrical and natural gas distribution grids.

Assume you have no natural gas, and no electricity from the grid.

As a stacked function, depending on the design, it could be a way to cook when there is no emergency that uses less fossil energy. E.g., if you envision using a retained heat cooker during an emergency, you could certainly use it when there wasn’t an emergency, and cut your fossil fuel expense/consumption accordingly.

Fuels can include the sun, wood, charcoal, on-site generated electricity, bottled propane, kerosene, etc.

Observe. What are your goals for this project? What do you want/plan to cook under these circumstances? What resources (space, equipment) are available? What strategies/tactics will you use? Do you do any cooking right now that doesn’t involve grid generated electricity or natural gas? What length of time will you be using your alternative cooking methods? Only during an emergency, or regularly?

Start your lists. What items are necessary? What functions are involved? What spaces?

Who does this work? One person by himself or herself? The whole family? Rotating jobs?

What are the safety issues with alternative cooking methods in your particular dwelling?

What scale is this project? How big is your household? A design for a student in a dorm room would be different from one for a family of six living in a suburb or a family of four living in a high rise apartment building.

Study and Evaluate. Do you have the equipment you need? If not, what needs to be built or bought? Do you have the necessary skills?

Do others need to learn these skills?

Do you have enough space? Need more?

Where will you do this alternative cooking? In the regular kitchen? Outside?

How long do you think you could use alternative methods to prepare your food? That is, what is the maximum length of time during an emergency that you could prepare food? A day? Week? Month?

Design. Make your design decisions based on your observation and evaluation. Where? When? What? How? How much?

Stage your decisions. What comes first? Middle? Last? Never mind the fact that this is a small design, put first things first and second things second and third things third, so you get a feeling of what it is like to organize a set of tasks such as this.

Budget. If any of this will cost money, get some estimates and develop a budget. Decide on a source of funds.

Write the report. Write the report and add it to your lifestyle plan.