No-mayo coleslaw

As Hurricane Irene lumbered up the East Coast yesterday, I spent the day in hurricane preparation.

Step 1: the usual. Make sure we have plenty of water, candles, batteries, and cash. Bring in everything from outside. Pick everything in the garden. Wash all the dishes and laundry in case we lose power. Charge all the phones.

Step 2: Turn all the perishable food into non-perishable versions.

I had a refrigerator full of vegetables. Normally this is a good thing, but if we lost power, I'd be SOL when it came to transforming those veggies into dinner. (Since I don't have a grill or a propane camp stove or anything.) So I spent yesterday cooking, turning all those veggies into things that could be eaten at room temperature. (I also made bread.)

Tabbouleh. Kale salad. And today's no-mayo slaw, recipe courtesy of Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.
1 small head red cabbage, shredded
4 medium carrots, shredded
1 bell pepper and 1 jalapeno, shredded
cilantro to taste

Mix those things together. If you're making this in advance of a hurricane, like me, keep the dressing separate until you want to eat the slaw, to keep it from sitting in the fridge for a few days in its own juices and getting soggy.

For the dressing:

2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
juice of 1 1/2 limes
1 small minced garlic clove
1/4 cup peanut or olive oil

Mix together the first three, and add the oil in a steady stream while whisking constantly.

Now, if the power goes out, I have a bare minimum of things that might go bad (mostly the meat in the freezer, and the eggs). All the food I prepared can survive for, and be eaten at, room temperature for several days, saving the space in the cooler for the meat and eggs and whatnot.

Best of all, it's all healthy fresh food, which means we won't have to subsist on granola bars and cold canned soup.