How's everybody doing so far? Have you been able to keep notes on a few of your meals this week? I only cooked once in the last week since I'm moving towards a mainly raw diet, but I did make sure to turn the heat down once I got my wok hot, it's a simple way to save gas. I've also been thinking about how much energy my juicer is eating up to make four juice everyday (breakfast and lunch juice for my wife and I.)
If you have already started to evaluate the energy use in your own cooking habits please respond with a comment to this post and let everyone know what you are thinking.
Hi everyone!
ReplyDeleteMonitoring my energy this week has been interesting so far. I have learned that I am always trying to rush through things so I can eat as fast as possible. Because of this, I realized that I usually am cooking everything at fairly hot temperatures. Although this week we are focusing on just monitoring our energy use I have begun to turn the stove down a little bit. I have also been sick this week and have been experimenting with making my tea in the microwave. Although I haven't mastered the right time to get a perfect brew (still under-nuking my water) I see this as a habit that I can easily change. My conventional tea method is to fill the kettle up with more water than I need and crank the stove up to the highest setting. I think this microwave method will is definitely going to save me a lot of energy
I think I definitely am wasting energy by cooking in pots/pans that aren't always the proper size. I've had to move/ship/store my things many times in the past couple years, and because of this I've tried to keep my possessions to a minimum. I own one pot and one pan, both fairly large. A lot of the time, I'm cooking portions that could definitely fit into smaller sized pots/pans. But, I don't really want to go out and buy new kitchenware just because of this... (I honestly do not cook very often.)
ReplyDeleteI put that lid on, turned down the heat, added more salt for higher temperatures...But still concerned with using more than one stove spot, since I rarely cook less than one dish (Chinese dinnersss). I feel bad about having to cook rice as well since the rice cooker takes FOREVER... Anybody have any ideas to solve this?
ReplyDeleteAlso, I tried to make hot chocolate the other day, but I ended up spending 30 minutes on ONE cup of hot chocolate... just trying to make sure it tastes right (amount of cocoa and sugar)
I haven't been able to cook too often this week, but plan on cooking a lot this weekend, having a family get together. Unfortunately, I think I'll be using quite a bit of energy. Planning on cooking a brisket chili, have to cook brisket first, then cook the rest of it in a crock pot. Anybody know how much energy a crock pot uses? Then I'm baking homemade mac 'n cheese, pumpkin and banana bread. Which means I'll be using the oven a lot!
ReplyDeleteTo Carmen, I'd suggest making a large amount adding more of whatever you think it needs, save the mix for future cups of hot chocolate. Also maybe use the microwave to warm up the milk?
@Maggie-
ReplyDeleteWell, I don't think it will be too much energy wasted if it's dinner cooked for a lot of people... I guess it also depends how long you're using each energy source (oven @ ? degrees and for how long). When you get a chance, fill that info out with the survey at the right column of our blog!
I wonder how different baked mac n cheese tastes compared to stovetop...