Blessings Darlings!
Being the busy little home maker I am, I'm defrosting the freezer as I type this. We have an OLD upright freezer, 14.7 cubic feet, not at all frost-free. We got it in January 1979, so it predates our 1980 marriage and LONG predates our 1987 Spawn.
Every now and then (really, more NOW), it needs to be defrosted. It's one of the easiest household tasks, if you manage things right. And the one thing that is most critical, to me, in 'managing things right' is to use big cardboard boxes - the type to hold hanging files in - in your freezer to hold things as a matter of course.
Our freezer has 4 of those in use. Two for meats, one for bones for broth and prepared broth, and one for fruits. I also use the cardboard 'bases' from cases of catfood in two places.
The boxes do two things. First, they prevent ice buildup on the TOP of the shelves. This the cardboard bases to, too. But on top of that, to empty the freezer before defrosting, and to re-fill after defrosting, all I have to do is move the box out or in. No trying to find things to store that food in. Easy peasy.
Once everything is out of the freezer, I just put big pots of boiling water in, close the door, and wait. Thermodynamics FTW! Of course, I have layers of towels on the floor, but since the freezer is in the garage, mostly I just sweep the puddles out after I'm done.
Once defrosted, the old darling runs like a top.
And while it defrosts, I get to multitask online.
Frondly, Fern
Showing posts with label energy efficiency. Show all posts
Showing posts with label energy efficiency. Show all posts
Monday, June 8, 2015
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Heat Wave Eve
Blessings Darlings!
An early heat wave is going to be starting here tomorrow. Temperatures will be in the 90's and the humidity will be high for 5 days. Therefore, I did some preparations to help reduce my electricity use during that time.
That means that today I totally caught up on the ironing, so I won't iron at all during the heat wave (the Spawn will, since he didn't iron his work clothes. His choice). The Spawn made blueberry muffins, and pizza for dinner tonight - we won't bake desserts during the heat wave, and will grill and/or pressure cook dinners. Bread and rolls are about to go into the oven, so we won't bake those during the hot days. We don't need the loaf bread at the moment, so that will go into the freezer for a few days.
Late spring allows me to do this. The hot weather isn't unrelenting ... nor is the cold weather. A little preparation, a little care to work with, not against, nature goes a long way right now.
Frondly, Fern
An early heat wave is going to be starting here tomorrow. Temperatures will be in the 90's and the humidity will be high for 5 days. Therefore, I did some preparations to help reduce my electricity use during that time.
That means that today I totally caught up on the ironing, so I won't iron at all during the heat wave (the Spawn will, since he didn't iron his work clothes. His choice). The Spawn made blueberry muffins, and pizza for dinner tonight - we won't bake desserts during the heat wave, and will grill and/or pressure cook dinners. Bread and rolls are about to go into the oven, so we won't bake those during the hot days. We don't need the loaf bread at the moment, so that will go into the freezer for a few days.
Late spring allows me to do this. The hot weather isn't unrelenting ... nor is the cold weather. A little preparation, a little care to work with, not against, nature goes a long way right now.
Frondly, Fern
Monday, June 8, 2009
The Summer Kitchen
Hi Fronds!
It's pretty much summer here. Temperature got up to a toasty 89 degrees today, and the humidity is currently at 83%.
I do not find this comfortable. I never DID find heat and humidity comfortable, so I can't blame it on me being a woman of a certain age. Therefore, one of my main goals is keeping the house cool.
But how to do this when I cook darn near everything from scratch? Like the soup and the corn bread I made today?
This is where having a summer kitchen comes in - cooking away from the main house, so you don't add heat to where you don't want it.
BACK IN THE DAY
Having a summer kitchen goes way back. It was standard for mansions back when the USA started. A trip to Mt. Vernon (which is a great place to visit for SO many reasons!) includes a tour of the detached kitchen there. That kitchen features a covered walkway to the house. Mine is not that fancy.
My kitchen appears under the maple tree out back. The shade is good there, even if the breeze is sometimes blocked by a neighbor's fence.
The standard parts of the kitchen are one aluminum folding table, one comfortable chair, the rocket stove, the BBQ grill/smoker, the hay box cooker, an extension cord, and any electric appliance I may need. Maybe the toaster oven. Maybe a one burner electric hotplate. I may have the day's ingredients out there in a cooler, too.
And, of course, a cold drink is part of the set up. Maybe an entire pitcher of cold drinks.
Benefits Of Summer Kitchen Cooking
The official benefit, of course, is having cooked food and not heating the house. But being outside is a benefit in general. (I'm thinking of going an entire week of outdoor living sometime soon, coming in only to hit the washroom, but that pagan and survivalist experiment will wait until later - I can still work out there on the laptop, at least.)
And the back yard comes with it's own floor show! Well, floor might not be the best word - birds are all around, the world's fattest squirrel thinks s/he owns the yard, the chipmunks are alway fun, and once we had a huge possum come sniffing around.
Our previous house also had the chickens a neighbor family kept for a few years, and their occassionally escaping bunny, several visiting cats, and a much smaller possum.
If the mosquitos get bad this year, I'm considing adding a screen house that I picked up at a garage sale to the kitchen set up. I certainly will use that if I spend a week outside camping.
Come away with me, darlings, to the Great Suburban Outdoors!
Frondly, Fern
It's pretty much summer here. Temperature got up to a toasty 89 degrees today, and the humidity is currently at 83%.
I do not find this comfortable. I never DID find heat and humidity comfortable, so I can't blame it on me being a woman of a certain age. Therefore, one of my main goals is keeping the house cool.
But how to do this when I cook darn near everything from scratch? Like the soup and the corn bread I made today?
This is where having a summer kitchen comes in - cooking away from the main house, so you don't add heat to where you don't want it.
BACK IN THE DAY
Having a summer kitchen goes way back. It was standard for mansions back when the USA started. A trip to Mt. Vernon (which is a great place to visit for SO many reasons!) includes a tour of the detached kitchen there. That kitchen features a covered walkway to the house. Mine is not that fancy.
My kitchen appears under the maple tree out back. The shade is good there, even if the breeze is sometimes blocked by a neighbor's fence.
The standard parts of the kitchen are one aluminum folding table, one comfortable chair, the rocket stove, the BBQ grill/smoker, the hay box cooker, an extension cord, and any electric appliance I may need. Maybe the toaster oven. Maybe a one burner electric hotplate. I may have the day's ingredients out there in a cooler, too.
And, of course, a cold drink is part of the set up. Maybe an entire pitcher of cold drinks.
Benefits Of Summer Kitchen Cooking
The official benefit, of course, is having cooked food and not heating the house. But being outside is a benefit in general. (I'm thinking of going an entire week of outdoor living sometime soon, coming in only to hit the washroom, but that pagan and survivalist experiment will wait until later - I can still work out there on the laptop, at least.)
And the back yard comes with it's own floor show! Well, floor might not be the best word - birds are all around, the world's fattest squirrel thinks s/he owns the yard, the chipmunks are alway fun, and once we had a huge possum come sniffing around.
Our previous house also had the chickens a neighbor family kept for a few years, and their occassionally escaping bunny, several visiting cats, and a much smaller possum.
If the mosquitos get bad this year, I'm considing adding a screen house that I picked up at a garage sale to the kitchen set up. I certainly will use that if I spend a week outside camping.
Come away with me, darlings, to the Great Suburban Outdoors!
Frondly, Fern
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Simmering Stew Sans Smoke
Let's say that you built your Rocket Stove (http://fernsfronds.blogspot.com/2009/04/rocket-powered-cooking.html) (Someday I'll figure out how to make the words "Rocket Stove" into a link here. But not this morning) and want to cook beans or do a long simmer of a stew. You can get the pot o' food up to a boil on the Rocket Stove, but keeping it there at a simmer for hours is NOT a good idea. First, it would take fuel all day. Second, you would be there feeding it the fuel all day, and you have a life.
What you need now is some variation on a Hay Box Cooker.
Original Hay Box Cooker
Traditionally a Hay Box Cooker is just what the title says - a box made of bales of hay. Hay insulates the pot/cassarole dish placed inside, and it cooks away for hours. Nothing burns. Wonderful low tech energy efficient approach to cooking!
My Insulated Cooker
I don't keep bales of hay in the house. Such a box would take up too much room, husband would throw a fit, and the cats would use it as a scratching post and soon I'd NOT have neat bales, or a box, but I'd have hay scattered all over the house.
What I do is use old coolers. My big one is an old plastic camping cooker, now cracked and permanently dirty. My smaller one is a styrofoam cooler that we got years back when we ordered a 3 pack of REAL Chicago Style pizzas, shipped from Chicago, frozen. Along with the coolers I use a bunch of small towels.
Actual Hay Box Cooking
When preparing to cook, I take the empty pot I'm going about to fill and use over to the cooler du jour. I put an inch of towels on the bottom. I place the pot in. I fill the area between the cooler walls and the pot with more towels. Then I take the pot away, leaving the 'nest' behind.
Now I fill the pot with what's to be cooked. Cover and heat the stuff to a boil on the rocket stove, and boil for about 5 minutes. This pasturizes things, if not sterilizes things. Now pop the pot back into the nest in the cooler, top with more towels, and close the cooler lid.
Be Prepared to Wait
Hay box cooking is NOT FAST. It is TOTALLY a part of the Slow Food Movement. I've read that you need to assume it will take one hour of hay box cooking for every 5 minutes you'd simmer on stove or in heated oven. Maybe my insulation is better than that of those authors, but I don't find it takes that long. OTOH, I can let it go that long - nothing burns, nothing evaporates.
Meal, with rocket stove and hay box
How does hay box plus rocket stove cooking work for a meal? Let's look at a stir-fry and rice dinner. Let's even assume that the rice is brown rice, which takes longer to cook.
So, after breakfast, you set up the hay box for your rice. Then you bring the rice/water/salt to a boil on the rocket stove. Once it has boiled 5 minutes you place it in the hay box, cover, and leave it for the rest of the day. If you are using white rice, do this at lunch or later.
The stir fry gets started at whatever point of your afternoon/evening that you normally would, for we all know that it's the cutting and measuring sauce stuff that takes the most time. Stir fry in a wok on the rocket stove. When stir fry is done, take pot of rice out of hay box. Serve dinner.
That's it.
Maybe I'll post a stir fry recipe tomorrow. We'll see.
Catch you later!
.
What you need now is some variation on a Hay Box Cooker.
Original Hay Box Cooker
Traditionally a Hay Box Cooker is just what the title says - a box made of bales of hay. Hay insulates the pot/cassarole dish placed inside, and it cooks away for hours. Nothing burns. Wonderful low tech energy efficient approach to cooking!
My Insulated Cooker
I don't keep bales of hay in the house. Such a box would take up too much room, husband would throw a fit, and the cats would use it as a scratching post and soon I'd NOT have neat bales, or a box, but I'd have hay scattered all over the house.
What I do is use old coolers. My big one is an old plastic camping cooker, now cracked and permanently dirty. My smaller one is a styrofoam cooler that we got years back when we ordered a 3 pack of REAL Chicago Style pizzas, shipped from Chicago, frozen. Along with the coolers I use a bunch of small towels.
Actual Hay Box Cooking
When preparing to cook, I take the empty pot I'm going about to fill and use over to the cooler du jour. I put an inch of towels on the bottom. I place the pot in. I fill the area between the cooler walls and the pot with more towels. Then I take the pot away, leaving the 'nest' behind.
Now I fill the pot with what's to be cooked. Cover and heat the stuff to a boil on the rocket stove, and boil for about 5 minutes. This pasturizes things, if not sterilizes things. Now pop the pot back into the nest in the cooler, top with more towels, and close the cooler lid.
Be Prepared to Wait
Hay box cooking is NOT FAST. It is TOTALLY a part of the Slow Food Movement. I've read that you need to assume it will take one hour of hay box cooking for every 5 minutes you'd simmer on stove or in heated oven. Maybe my insulation is better than that of those authors, but I don't find it takes that long. OTOH, I can let it go that long - nothing burns, nothing evaporates.
Meal, with rocket stove and hay box
How does hay box plus rocket stove cooking work for a meal? Let's look at a stir-fry and rice dinner. Let's even assume that the rice is brown rice, which takes longer to cook.
So, after breakfast, you set up the hay box for your rice. Then you bring the rice/water/salt to a boil on the rocket stove. Once it has boiled 5 minutes you place it in the hay box, cover, and leave it for the rest of the day. If you are using white rice, do this at lunch or later.
The stir fry gets started at whatever point of your afternoon/evening that you normally would, for we all know that it's the cutting and measuring sauce stuff that takes the most time. Stir fry in a wok on the rocket stove. When stir fry is done, take pot of rice out of hay box. Serve dinner.
That's it.
Maybe I'll post a stir fry recipe tomorrow. We'll see.
Catch you later!
.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Rocket-powered cooking
Rocket stoves are about the coolest - uh, hottest cooking idea I've played with. The are a variation on the 'traditional' hobo stove, the variation mostly being the addition of insulation to the body of the stove.
Why Rocket Stove Rock
The rock because they take very little fuel (like, sticks rather than charcoal, logs, or fossil fuels) while producing lots of heat and very little smoke/particulates. They burn very efficently thus lowering the carbon footprint of cooking with sticks.
And they can be incredibly cheap to make.
Making a Rocket Stove
WEAR SERIOUS GLOVES! Cut edges of cans are SHARP!!!
Let me describe making a hobo stove first. At the simplest, it takes two empty cans from food with no white plastic coating on the inside. Say, a can from 15 oz of canned green beans and one can from 10 oz of condensed soup. The big can stands upright, with the open/removed top part on top. Using tinsnips, or maybe a military style can opener, you cut a hole in the side at the bottom of this can, into which you fit the other can. The other can has both top and bottom removed. The top, or I guess bottom, of the smaller can gets wedged into the maw of the smaller can to hold fuel. Put sticks on the small lid feeder, tinder in the bottom of the upright can, fire up the tinder, feed the sticks into that fire, and lots of flame comes out the top of the green beans can.
Now, to make the simplest rocket stove, get a bigger can yet. Maybe from a big can of sweet potatoes, better would be a #10 gallon sized can from something ... maybe beans again. Remove the top, and empty the can. Cut a hole in the side, near the bottom, for the soup can to extend out of. Cut a hole in the removed top of the can, in the center, for the upright 'flu' can to fin into Then put the hobo stove in the big can, so the soup can DOES extend out of it. Fill the space between the outer can and the inner can with 'non-flamable insulating stuff'. Dry sand or earth will do. Once you have filled the space between the inner and outer can to almost the top of the inner can, fit the lid of the outer can on that, to help hold the insulation in place.
If you are using a can smaller than a #10, use a churchkey bottle opener to make air holes around the top of the bigger can. If you are using a #10 can, that probably won't be necessary unless you are going to use a wok or other big pot or pan to cook with. Instead, you might want to cut strips of the lid you removed from it to make a support over the top to support a smaller pot over the flame.
What Rocket Stove Cook Best
Uh, food.
Okay - they excel at boiling water, at stir frying, at frying. All things that take hot heat and not long simmering. For dishes that take long simmering, you combine this with a insulated cooking technique lik a hay box cooker.
When/where To Use Rocket Stove
I use mine in summer, for outdoor cooking. I suppose I could use it in the fireplace in the winter if I had to.
THE site on Rocket Stoves
You can download real instructions, buy one pre-made, and/or watch a video on one being made at http://rocketstoves.org/
Maybe someday I'll post about a Summer Kitchen. Maybe I'll tell you about my experiences hay box cooking tomorrow. Depending on the car situation. Car died while son was driving to college again today. I'm thinking it's a cracked distributor head, but what do *I* know?
Catch you later!
Why Rocket Stove Rock
The rock because they take very little fuel (like, sticks rather than charcoal, logs, or fossil fuels) while producing lots of heat and very little smoke/particulates. They burn very efficently thus lowering the carbon footprint of cooking with sticks.
And they can be incredibly cheap to make.
Making a Rocket Stove
WEAR SERIOUS GLOVES! Cut edges of cans are SHARP!!!
Let me describe making a hobo stove first. At the simplest, it takes two empty cans from food with no white plastic coating on the inside. Say, a can from 15 oz of canned green beans and one can from 10 oz of condensed soup. The big can stands upright, with the open/removed top part on top. Using tinsnips, or maybe a military style can opener, you cut a hole in the side at the bottom of this can, into which you fit the other can. The other can has both top and bottom removed. The top, or I guess bottom, of the smaller can gets wedged into the maw of the smaller can to hold fuel. Put sticks on the small lid feeder, tinder in the bottom of the upright can, fire up the tinder, feed the sticks into that fire, and lots of flame comes out the top of the green beans can.
Now, to make the simplest rocket stove, get a bigger can yet. Maybe from a big can of sweet potatoes, better would be a #10 gallon sized can from something ... maybe beans again. Remove the top, and empty the can. Cut a hole in the side, near the bottom, for the soup can to extend out of. Cut a hole in the removed top of the can, in the center, for the upright 'flu' can to fin into Then put the hobo stove in the big can, so the soup can DOES extend out of it. Fill the space between the outer can and the inner can with 'non-flamable insulating stuff'. Dry sand or earth will do. Once you have filled the space between the inner and outer can to almost the top of the inner can, fit the lid of the outer can on that, to help hold the insulation in place.
If you are using a can smaller than a #10, use a churchkey bottle opener to make air holes around the top of the bigger can. If you are using a #10 can, that probably won't be necessary unless you are going to use a wok or other big pot or pan to cook with. Instead, you might want to cut strips of the lid you removed from it to make a support over the top to support a smaller pot over the flame.
What Rocket Stove Cook Best
Uh, food.
Okay - they excel at boiling water, at stir frying, at frying. All things that take hot heat and not long simmering. For dishes that take long simmering, you combine this with a insulated cooking technique lik a hay box cooker.
When/where To Use Rocket Stove
I use mine in summer, for outdoor cooking. I suppose I could use it in the fireplace in the winter if I had to.
THE site on Rocket Stoves
You can download real instructions, buy one pre-made, and/or watch a video on one being made at http://rocketstoves.org/
Maybe someday I'll post about a Summer Kitchen. Maybe I'll tell you about my experiences hay box cooking tomorrow. Depending on the car situation. Car died while son was driving to college again today. I'm thinking it's a cracked distributor head, but what do *I* know?
Catch you later!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
