Cooking for Chaos

Quit your Y2K bellyaching and get ready for chaos: Build a straw-bale greenhouse, cook up a bucket of yeast sauce or catch rainwater in a trash can.

And that’s just for starters, according to the authors of “The Y2K Survival Guide and Cookbook,” a 128-page paperback. The book was written to help people cope with catastrophe, whether it be anticipated computer glitches in 2000 or a major earthquake.

“Don’t just wring [your] hands, get busy and do something about it,” said author Dorothy R. Bates, who has written nine cookbooks. Her co-author and son, Albert K. Bates, has written six books on energy, environment and history.

Their Y2K book gives recipes for wood stove, fireplace and campfire cooking, with ingredients that don’t require refrigeration. You may not have electricity at the turn of the century, but you could have cheese-less macaroni--with a secret ingredient. It’s a nutritional yeast sauce, which is a cheese substitute.

The $12.95 book was written as a handbook for a Y2K preparedness course presented by the Ecovillage Training Center in Summertown, Tenn., which provides courses on sustainable, self-reliant living.

For information, call (931) 964-3571.