After the Storm . . .

The worst thing was the wind. It roared like an oncoming fighter jet. It moaned like a person in pain. It turned our yard into a swirling sea of rain, leaves, falling trees and flying debris. When it finally died down, it left us with a picture of desolation reminiscent of war-torn Sarajevo.

We were lucky. My wife and I live in a sturdy old house in a neighborhood dense with foliage, and our trees bore the brunt of Hurricane Andrew’s fury. Unlike hundreds of thousands of our less fortunate neighbors in south Dade County, we still had a roof over our heads.

Nonetheless, when I walked outside at 7 a.m. Monday morning, I was in for a shock. Gone were our carport and the canopy over our front door. Flying debris had shattered our car windshield. Twisted tree trunks had turned our yard into a dense, impenetrable forest. A fallen avocado tree had damaged our septic system and shoved a 500-pound air-conditioning unit off its concrete base.

Toppled trees made our street impassable. Even if we’d been able to get our car out of the driveway, there were no open businesses to drive to. Power lines lay in spaghetti tangles on roadsides. I took another look, then went inside to make breakfast.

Cooking may seem like the last thing you’d want to do after a devastating hurricane--especially when you have neither electricity nor water. But for 10 days following Hurricane Andrew, mealtime became the focal point of our existence. In a world turned topsy-turvy by 150-mile-an-hour winds, where the most plebeian activities--from turning on a light switch to flushing a toilet--were suddenly impossible, cooking represented a momentary return to normalcy, a sacrament of survival.

We’d taken the precaution of filling our bathtubs with water (each with a purifying splash of bleach). We had no electricity, but we did have a single-burner gas camping stove and a kerosene lamp to cook by. For our first post-storm meal, I fried up some bacon, then cooked a potato pancake and eggs in the drippings. (Health consciousness didn’t seem to matter much in the wake of a hurricane.) To wash it down, I made instant coffee. Never has breakfast tasted so good.

In the week that followed, I did virtually all my cooking over that one-burner camping stove. Necessity became the mother of improvisation. I learned to “toast” bagels, rolls and even garlic bread in a skillet. I even managed to make zucchini au gratin by simmering pan-fried zucchini in cream and freshly grated Parmesan cheese. One-pot cooking helped keep dishwashing to a minimum--a good idea in the absence of hot water.

It takes a natural disaster to make you appreciate one of the conveniences that virtually every North American takes for granted: refrigeration. The challenge of menu planning was to use up ingredients before they spoiled. To keep food cool, we used containers of frozen stock as ice packs. Our high-tech refrigerator became an old-fashioned ice box. We transferred all the food to the freezer, so the space to chill was smaller.

For the first week after the storm, I spent much of my time in pursuit of ice. By the second day, the main roads were clear enough for me to bicycle to Dixie Highway, the primary artery through Coconut Grove. It hadn’t taken long for roadside entrepreneurs to set up shop from the back of pick-up trucks. Some sold chain saws and generators at usurious prices. (It would take the city two more days to enact anti-price-gouging measures.) One man did a booming trade in cold soft drinks.

After two days of drinking warm beverages under a sweltering Florida sun, an icy soda tasted better than Champagne. I bought a few extra sodas for the volunteers who were directing traffic in the absence of traffic lights. For an outrageous $5, I coaxed the vendor into filling a small cooler with ice. Highway robbery, perhaps, but the precious ice would enable me to keep the milk and vegetables in our refrigerator wholesome for another 12 hours.

Ice became South Florida’s symbol of affluence and well-being. One day, our neighbors drove all the way to Palm Beach (a 1 1/2-hour ride) to buy ice, which they brought back in a cooler. They gave us a bag, and we presented them with a pot of cold vegetable soup in appreciation. The next day, our local convenience store opened for a few hours to sell two items: ice and bottled water. The waiting line curled around the parking lot. Armed guards were on hand to keep order.

As the food that had been stored in our freezer thawed, we unearthed treasures from long-forgotten recipe tests: A bag of wild mushrooms, which I served with fettuccine and garlic. A pound of ground conch and a pint of lobster broth, which I transformed into creamy seafood bisque. The fruits from toppled trees augmented our diet. Our fallen avocado tree gave us a dying gift of sweet Florida avocados. A downed palm tree supplied green coconuts, which contain a delectable sweet-sour “water” for sipping.

I’ll never forget my first trip to a post-hurricane supermarket. I had been to this store at 1 a.m. the night before Andrew struck, when the lines stretched back to the meat department. Now a waiting line formed in front of the store an hour before it opened. The electricity was still out, but a generator ran a few fluorescent lights and the cash registers. The shelves in the dairy, meat and produce sections were empty, but I was able to buy bread and eggs.

On the fourth day, we drove to one of the worst-hit areas, Homestead, to look for our friends, Mark and Kiki Ellenby, who grow tropical fruit. The devastation we witnessed made our own privations seem like luxuries. Once-lush mango and lime groves were now barren fields. A dead horse, its carcass bloated from the heat, lay by the side of the road. By the time we reached the Ellenbys, my wife and I were in tears.

We found our friends cleaning their house (the porch and some windows were missing, but the roof was intact) and replanting toppled trees. Mark beamed over his latest acquisition--a generator--and talked feverishly of horticultural techniques for salvaging fallen lychee trees. Half his star fruit trees had survived the storm, as did his family “treasure,” the exotic fruit-tree saplings in his nursery.

That’s not to say that the Ellenbys--or any of South Florida’s growers--will have it easy in the months and years to come. Virtually all of Florida’s $20-million lime crop and $13-million avocado crop were destroyed. So were the packing houses, through which pass 50% of the nation’s winter vegetables. According to Keith Mitchell, production manager for Florida fruit magnate J. R. Brooks, it will take two to four years to resume any fruit production and 10 years to return to pre-hurricane levels.

On the brighter side, the hurricane had a warming effect on neighborly relations. Within 24 hours of the storm, we met by name and chatted with no fewer than five neighbors to whom we’d previously only waved. One helped us clear a tree blocking our driveway. Doors and windows normally closed on account of air conditioning were thrown open. People who had generators offered to keep food cold for people who didn’t.

Amid the scenes of waste and destruction, I will remember a more benign vision: an impromptu barbecue at the home of my neighbors, Leon and Nancy. To celebrate the clearing of their back yard, they set a picnic table with a linen tablecloth, cloth napkins, silverware, wine glasses and candles. After three grime-filled days of cooking over a camping stove and eating off paper plates, the luxury of a properly set table was both moving and comical.

Ten days after the storm, Florida Power and Light finally restored our electricity. As its trucks rolled by, we gave them a standing ovation. Yet it was with a touch of sadness that I put away the kerosene lamp and camping stove. I will miss those one-pot dinners eaten by the golden glow of the oil lamp. I will miss the star-filled skies over a city in darkness, the peacefulness of the Pre-Industrial Age, before fax machines, stereos and television. I will miss playing games by candlelight and chatting with my wife for hours in the dark.

We ate well during Hurricane Andrew, but many people didn’t. While our lives are back to normal, hundreds of thousands of people are still homeless. While our supermarkets are open again, many people are still lining up for food, water and food stamps. And now, many residents of Kauai are also homeless and hungry because of a hurricane.

If you would like to help Florida and/or Kauai’s hurricane victims, call the Red Cross, (800) 842-2200, or send a check to your local chapter.

HURRICANE BREAKFAST

6 slices bacon

2 medium potatoes, peeled and coarsely grated

2 tablespoons butter or vegetable or canola oil, plus more if needed, optional

Salt

Freshly ground pepper

2 eggs

Cook bacon to desired doneness in 10-inch cast-iron or non-stick skillet over medium-high heat. Drain on paper towels. Pour bacon fat into cup and set aside, leaving 2 tablespoons in skillet.

Squeeze handfuls of grated potato to wring out any liquid. Return skillet to heat and add butter if not using bacon grease. Add potatoes and pat into compact round cake with spatula. Cook over medium heat 3 to 4 minutes, shaking skillet to keep pancake from sticking. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Flip pancake over by flicking pan with your wrist. (Or place plate over skillet, invert pancake onto plate and slide inverted pancake back into skillet.) Spoon little more bacon fat or butter, if necessary, into skillet at edges of pancake. Season again to taste with salt and pepper. Cook pancake until crusty on outside and tender inside, 3 to 4 minutes. Slide onto round dish or platter.

Add little more fat to skillet pan. Crack in eggs. Cover and fry until cooked to desired doneness, 1 to 2 minutes. (For eggs-over-easy, flip after 1 minute.) Return bacon to skillet to warm. Arrange eggs on potato pancake and surround with strips of bacon. Makes 2 servings.

SKILLET GARLIC BREAD

1/2 cup butter

4 cloves garlic, minced

3 tablespoons finely chopped parsley or green onions

1 loaf French bread, cut into 1/2-inch-thick slices

Few tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Melt butter in skillet over medium-high heat. Add garlic and parsley and saute until tender and fragrant, 2 to 3 minutes. Do not let brown. Pour half of garlic butter into cup and set aside.

Add bread slices to remaining garlic butter in skillet and cook until crisp and golden brown, 2 to 3 minutes. Turn and brown other side, adding remaining butter. If all bread won’t fit in skillet, cook in several batches. Remove bread from pan, sprinkle with Parmesan cheese and serve at once. Makes 6 to 8 servings.