What a ‘Cover Up!’

Karina’s Environmental Cooking Tip!

My Mum taught me from a young age: save electricity! As far back as I remember, she has taught me how to conserve electricity in the kitchen. Being brought up with a combustion oven, for about 10 years of my teenage years, I instinctively acknowledge the significant environmental, financial and wellbeing advantages of cooking from a combustion oven. The environmental advantage is that you are saving electricity. The financial advantage is that you are saving money from not needing to utilise as much electricity. The wellbeing advantages is that during the winter time, this combustion oven acts as a heater. You also get to chop fire wood, which will help burn those calories! Win-win!

Without telling you my life story, I will get to the point. Actually, I will get to a few points, as listed below:

– Always cook with the lids on all your pots and pans, unless you really want to make your food crispy, or if the method in the recipe requires the lid to remain off. Keeping the lids on will save you money and save the environment by creating shorter cooking periods and using less electricity.

– Turn the oven off about 5 minutes prior to your food being completely cooked. This way, the residual heat from the oven will continue to cook your food, hence helping the environment and saving money by reducing the time the oven is on and by using less electricity.

– If you have a combustion oven, do all your cooking in this oven and on the combustion stove top, which will save you money and will really help the environment in a huge way!

– Use your combustion oven to heat your house, instead of using the heater. This will save you money and will also help the environment.

– If you have a combustion stove, use the top of the stove to heat your stove-approved kettle (should be all made out of a material which would not melt when exposed to high temperatures). Since we no longer have a combustion oven, we still have a combustion stove, which we use all the time during the winter months to heat the house, boil the kettle and occasionally cook food.

I have many other environmental saving tips, however, I will keep this post brief.

Have fun in the kitchen!

Take care!

Karina x