It was a dark and stormy night...

Earlier this evening, we got a really big thunderstorm. The thunder and lightning really weren't too bad, but the wind was probably the worst I've seen with a storm in this area. And as proof I wasn't wrong in thinking that, I found out that the school that's almost next door to us, which is a WeatherBug station, recorded a gust of 54 mph this evening! That's definitely the highest gust I've ever seen recorded at the school.

With winds that strong, it's pretty tough to escape some negative consequences. Our neighbors on either side of us had large limbs break off of trees in their yards - just one more reason I'm glad we don't have trees in in our yard! Luckily, neither of them really had any damage from that happening.

However, I'm sure the winds were also in some way responsible for the power outage we experienced as the storm was winding down. The power went out several times during the peak of the storm, but after 30 seconds or a minute, it would come back on again. Finally, though, there was a time where it went off and didn't come back on. It didn't really affect us right away, since it's neither cold enough to need heat nor hot enough to need air conditioning, and it was still light outside.

However, after a while, we decided we should think about dinner. Probably most people in our situation would have just driven until they got to an area with power, and then eat at a restaurant, but that's not what we opted to do.

Brian suggested we go get propane for our grill, since it had recently run out, then go to the grocery store and get some food to grill for dinner. I could think of no reason to protest this idea, so that's what we did!

After we got the gas tank filled, we picked up a couple of little Delmonico steaks, some shrimp, some raw broccoli and petite baby carrots, and some potato salad.

By the time we got back to the house, it was dark. Luckily, I have a bunch of jar candles sitting together in one section of the kitchen, so I was able to quickly get them lit and distributed throughout the kitchen so we had some light. Brian quickly found our crank flashlight too, so we were all set.

Brian hooked up the gas and started the grill, and we started working on our veggie packets. We really like making packets of mixed vegetables for the grill. We normally have a larger variety of vegetables, but we didn't want them to take too long, so we only chose broccoli and petite baby carrots this time. We each had a sheet of foil and piled our veggies on the foil. Then we splashed some olive oil on them and seasoned them to our own liking. After that, we just folded the sides and ends up, leaving a little opening for steam to escape, and put them on the top rack of the grill.

The steaks were just as simple. We didn't have time to marinate them, so Brian just put some olive oil on them too, along with some kosher salt and black pepper.

For the shrimp, we tried something different. Normally we marinate them and thread them on pre-soaked wooden skewers, but we didn't have time for any of those things either. So we decided to try the foil packet approach with the shrimp as well. We put a slice of butter in with each packet, but no seasonings.

As the food was cooking, I suggested we have some wine, which Brian thought was a great idea - we already had the candlelight, so why not add some wine to the meal?! He took the flashlight to the basement and found a nice little bottle of Late Harvest Riesling from Stony Lonesome Wine Cellar along Seneca Lake in New York (which we visited last August). We sipped our wine in the candlelit kitchen as our food cooked outside in the dark, although Brian had to keep going out to the grill with the flashlight to check on the status of the food.

Finally, everything was done, and we sat down to eat our meal. And what do you know- just as we did that, the power came back on! We joked about it no longer being a romantic meal, but we enjoyed it just the same. Everything was cooked to perfection! I was pleasantly surprised at how well the shrimp turned out being cooked in foil packets, although they did take longer to cook than I expected.

So now the storm has passed, the power is restored, and life is back to normal. But we did have a neat little cooking adventure this evening, which we both thoroughly enjoyed!