Your existing kitchen stove

If your kitchen stove is the electric variety, I’m sorry. They’re too power-hungry and inefficient to power with a generator. (And even when the power is on, electric stoves are just difficult to cook with.)

If, on the other hand, you’re blessed with a gas range in your kitchen, then you are, quite literally, as they say, cookin’ with gas! You might even be doing so in a power outage, since most gas delivery systems are pressurized, and not immediately dependent on grid power. Even if the pilot light is out, you can let a match or lighter be your pilot.

So a gas stove is a great ‘Plan A’ for cooking in a short-term grid-down scenario, so long as you have a solid ‘Plan B’ and ‘Plan C’, and have given some forethought to ventilation in your kitchen. This can be as simple as opening a window, if the weather allows. A more solid option is to install a range hood that vents outside the house, and build in a power bypass that you can plug directly into your generator or battery bank with an extension cord, should the grid go down.

Having the right gas grill out back can solve quite a few of the aforementioned problems, particularly if you have it in a covered area with some useful counter or table space nearby. Don’t forget to store some extra fuel — and make a point of using your grill at least once a month as a way of keeping it maintained.