In the world of breakfasts, there is one clear winner for me. POEC, or hash brown potatoes, plenty of onions, eggs, and Cholula ™. This favorite breakfast of mine is so far in the favorite column that I have to ration it. If I have POEC one morning, I make myself have some sort of cereal the next morning. Otherwise I would weigh many more pounds than would be healthy for me. On oatmeal mornings, I resign myself to the fact that I’ll likely be hungry again by 10:30. That is ok though, because today’s mediocre breakfast in an investment in the potential for a great breakfast tomorrow. I’ve learned I can wait for a day if I need to.
Living the rural life has its drawbacks. One is the reliability of the electrical grid. Our provider is the Rural Electrification Association, or REA. We fondly joke with one another that REA really stands for Repair Every Afternoon 🙂 We pay some of the highest rates for electricity in the country, and for good reason. The densely (in every sense of the word) packed one mile section of the road we live on has exactly 3 houses on it. This means the REA has to maintain a mile of poles and wires for 3 customers. It amazes me that they are able to pull this off at all.
The other morning dawned bright in terms of breakfast prospects, but overcast in terms of the weather. Then it began to rain hard. I do like the rain, even when it causes me to have to readjust my work outside sometimes. This morning’s rain brought with it a power outage. I was just getting organized to put together a POEC breakfast when the lights went out. It dawned on me in a horrified realization that I depended on electricity for my cherished and hard won breakfast. Nooooooo! Power outages can take hours to turn around, and I was poised to make my breakfast right now.
As I contemplated the horror of a cereal morning, I realized I had a spare house, and one that was particularly designed to be self sustaining in situations just like this one. Our motorhome. Hope rose in my soul. We can yet pull this one off. I gathered my ingredients and utensils, and slipped out the door. I did notice a puzzled look on Alice’s face, but there was no time to explain. The clock was ticking, and my stomach was demanding relief.
Once out there, putting the breakfast together on our propane stove top was a snap. After all, I’ve been practicing this particular chore for some decades now. After disappearing out the door with odds and ends, I reappeared about 20 minutes later with a skillet of piping hot POEC. Sometimes when you have to work for something the results taste all the sweeter.
Last night during another stormy time, the power went out yet again. The sauna was lit and I was darned if I was going to miss that weekly ritual. So I got myself ready and entered our lovely attached sauna room. After sweating for a while, I started wishing I had some water to throw on the rocks, but also to rinse off the sweat pouring off my body. What to do? Aha, the spare house to the rescue. Walking outside without the benefit of clothes (not as unusual as one might think in this neighborhood), I carried the sauna bucket into the RV, turned on the pump, and filled up with lovely clean water. The steam for that sauna was especially sweet, although the shower at the end was a bit on the cold side. Still, it was once again the spare house to the rescue. I think everyone should have one.