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One of the biggest hassles of a power outage: your food goes bad. Using only the ingredients that the USDA deems safe when your fridge goes out, local chefs gave The List their best power-outage concoctions. (The linked recipes take a minute to load.)

1. Heirloom tomato salad

   Will Artley of Evening Star Café concocted this tomato salad with basil pesto and parmesan. He recommends that readers “grab a bottle of Pinot Noir and a few candles, grab your better half, and tell him/her to meet you on the back porch.”

2. Tomato and melon gazpacho

   Chef Barry Koslow from Tallula created a gorgeous gazpacho of fruits, veggies, Worcestershire, Tabsco, and spices. If you have a battery-operated immersion blender, great; if not, a potato masher will do.

3. Mini burritos

   Blake King, sauté cook at Central recommends combining salsa, cheese (grate hard cheddar, one of the cheeses that’s safe to eat from the fridge in a power outage), a can of drained black beans, hot sauce and rolling the mixture into a tortilla.

4. Veggie wraps

   Artley, who himself lost power for three days, persisted on food from his garden, including the ingredients of this veggie-packed wrap. It calls for curry powder, mayo (which the USDA says is safe to use for eight hours even after you lose refrigeration), herbs, and tortillas.

5. "Cooked" pasta

   You can still “cook” pasta without your electric stovetop — King suggests running hot water from the faucet into a pot of angel hair pasta until it’s edible. Strain, toss with extra virgin olive oil and butter, and throw in some rehydrated fruit.

6. Ants on a log

   For some protein, Artley suggests this childhood classic: Smear peanut butter (he recommends chunky) in the groove of a celery stalk and top with raisins. Adorable.

7. Peanut butter stuffed French toast

   Ok, so this recipe assumes that you have a gas stove and oven … and that you’re getting to your milk and eggs within two hours of losing power (the recommended USDA timeframe), but this French toast from Steve Mannino of Rustico makes the list for sounding so awesome. Slather the dish in jelly-infused maple syrup and your power outage won’t seem so bad.