For those of you who follow me on Instagram, Facebook and/or Twitter (if you don’t, you should!!!!! See links to the left), you will have noticed that I was MIA all last week…no pictures of food I cooked and definitely no funny “Angela” stories.

South Jersey got hit with 25 minutes of pure insanity, otherwise known as a tornado!! In my 27 years on this earth, I have never experienced anything like this. Of course, in my typical fashion, despite the chaos, a funny story came out of it because I was involved. Wednesday I was cooking for a new client (who I was absolutely honored to be cooking for), when I received a text message from my Mom telling me to wrap it up early because there was a bad storm coming. Of course, I didn’t listen to a word she said…I figured she was a worry wart or that the newscasters were wrong as usual. HALT! I should probably stop the story here and back it up a little bit… I had parked at the end of the driveway of the house where I was cooking because they had construction happening in the front yard. Keep this in mind as it will come into play later in the story.

So I continued on cooking up a storm as I always do (no pun intended! lol), and I wrapped up around 5:30. Due to the construction, I did not want to track dirt into my client’s new beautiful home, so I decided it would be best to put ALL of my bags (pots, pans, groceries, etc.) on the front porch along with my shoes that were left there from the morning (I wear slippers when I’m in clients’ homes).

I was just about to put the last bag on the porch and in walks my client – along with the most deathly-looking sky I had ever seen. In a matter of literally two minutes (no lie, I have never seen anything come on as quickly as this storm), there was absolutely no possibility of me being able to load my car and leave. As I started to ask my client if it was okay if I waited until the storm passed, the electricity went off and our phones started making a noise I had never heard before alerting us to seek shelter because there was a tornado. Then the house began to shake!

I looked out the back door and all of the furniture and anything that wasn’t tied down was now flying around the yard. I suggested we grab a candle and run to the basement…and that is precisely what we did – RUN! So here I am, a brand new hire who won’t leave LOL! Thankfully I was welcomed with open arms into the basement, and within the next 20 minutes my new best friend and I (haha) discussed life and tried to figure out what the hell was happening outside. Next thing you know, our cell phones stop working and the storm started to calm down. We made our way out of the basement and back upstairs only to find an absolute mess outside!

I opened the front door to attempt to pack up my car (bolts of lightning were still striking the ground, but at least the wind and rain had calmed down) and my cooking equipment was ALL OVER THE PLACE! My cooler bags with my pantry items had about 5 inches of water in them. My binder with all of my recipes, invoices, heating instructions, etc. was totally destroyed. My food processor somehow managed to get out of its bag and all of the parts were thrown all over the yard. It took me about 45 minutes to collect all of my belongings. BUT, I left shoeless…couldn’t find those suckers anywhere until I drove down the street to find them at the yard of another house (along with my portable plastic egg carton).

Needless to say, my 25 minute commute home took me well over three hours. I have never seen anything like this…trees on top of houses, on top of cars, telephone poles and wires down all over, and the scariest thing of all (to me)…no cell service, hence no GPS (I have ZERO sense of direction). Below are images of just some of the trees that I saw on my way home that were torn up by the roots.

The next few days were more difficult than usual, considering almost all of my town was without power (stores, stoplights, etc.) hence, NO grocery stores anywhere in sight…my nightmare come true, lol!

Despite all of the environmental damage that was done in our area, I am happy to say (as far as I know) that no one was hurt in this horrible storm. Cars can be replaced, roofs can be repaired, and I can always print some new recipes and buy another pair of work shoes. So there you have it, another story for the books! This will be a first cook date I will never forget! (I don’t think my new client will, either – and yes, she liked the food!)