Cooking Day

What a morning! I’ve made 3 pans of cornbread, 4 batches of muffins, a meatloaf, 2 pans of French toast, one batch of biscuits, a few pans of meringue cookies, and a mess of meat balls! I’m sure that the questions are just filling your head; the main one is “why?” . No, I’m not having a party, nor am I preparing for a cataclysmic event. This is just one of the ways that I try to save electricity.


Once a week I do all of the baking that we will need for that week. (Remember that menu? Sure comes in handy here.) I just hate heating up the entire great room just to cook a meal. So, as long as I have the oven and the kitchen heated up, I go ahead and do all of the baking that I’ll need. This saves energy by eliminating the need to preheat the oven 7 different times during the week. The cooking times can also overlap each other, meaning that the oven is on for less time on one day than the combined times of the other days. I almost always have at least 2 pans in the oven at a time.

This does make for a super busy morning in the kitchen. My boys look forward to cooking day, because they are directed outside. This is NOT the time to try to teach cooking skills. It’s just one morning a week, so it’s not in the heat of the day. The air conditioner isn’t having to run on overdrive trying to keep up with me. For most of the morning, I keep the window open.

Of course, some baked goods just don’t keep very well. Those are the foods that are schedule for the meals on baking day. French toast really wouldn’t be as good the next day, so that was our breakfast this morning. The boys love corn dog pie. So that’s what they get for lunch.

Side note: Corndog pie is one of my recipe experiments. It is just a pan of cornbread with chopped up bits of hot dog baked into it. They get to dip it in mustard just like a regular corndog. It is super cheep to make, as well as super easy!

Baking biscuits ahead of time just makes my life a little easier. My husband has been spoiled by me. He is used to having a hot breakfast to take with him to work every morning. I certainly don’t mind heating everything up first thing in the morning during the winter months. But once it gets to be air conditioner season, I heat up as little as possible. I don’t even make coffee in the summer months! He can take a few biscuits with him to his office and heat them up there. Since the bacon and cheese are already baked into the biscuit, there is no reason to fire up the oven or the stove first thing in the morning.

I’m sure that you’ll find many reasons within your own homes that baking day is beneficial, from time savings to savings on the electricity bill.

Low Energy Snack

Sugar-free gelatin is one of my favorite snacks to prepare during the hot months. When made in this way, it requires very little electricity. It is also very low in calories, making it a low-energy snack.

I have a work table on my south-facing deck. It gets super hot out there, too hot to enjoy, but perfect for cooking. I use the principles used by solar ovens to dissolve the gelatin into the hot water. I pour a cup of water into a black cooking pot, pour in the packet of flavored gelatin, and put the glass lid on top of it. So far, this is just like everyone else makes it. But instead of putting it on the stove, I set it out on my deck! The rays from the direct sun enter through the glass lid. The energy is absorbed into the black pot, heating up the water. It gets hot enough for the powder to completely dissolve! There is no need to even turn on the stovetop.

The only electricity that is needed is that which runs the refrigerator. I save the energy that boils the water on the stove as well as the air-conditioner to cool off the room when I am done.  It is super easy, and super safe, and pretty cheep. The kids could even make it without supervision.  So now you can make your own low energy snack. Somehow, porch Jell-o just doesn’t sound as good.

The Clothes Dryer

The number one frugal tip for summer time is to put your laundry out in the yard! Do I have your attention yet?
I found a fantastic site that estimates just how much we are spending on our comforts of life. http://www.electricity-usage.com/Electricity-Usage-Calculator.aspx
I checked my electricity bill from last month. We pay just under 11 cents per Kwh. I also used the preset amount for the clothes dryer. I don’t know exactly what the wattage is on mine. I don’t really keep up with things like that. So these are just good general numbers.

If you use it for an hour, which I would say is typical for a load of clothes with jeans and towels in it, then it will cost you 60 cents per load. Wow! Somehow I didn’t realize that it was this much. I wash at least 2, sometimes 3 loads of laundry everyday. This is one of the joys of having a big family. I would average this out to say that we spend $1.50 every day on the clothes dryer. In a 30 day cycle, this adds $45 to the electricity bill. Good grief! I pay $45 dollars to dry my clothes?

Now let’s keep in mind that this is only the cost of the dryer. This does not include the air conditioning costs. Um, lady, what does the air conditioner have to do with drying clothes? A lot actually. The dryer, while most of the warm air is going out the vent, a lot of the heat is being put into the air of your home. It heats up the house, which must be cooled back off using the air conditioner. Sorry, I’m not going to calculate the ambient temperature losses on my dryer and the energy to cool a set number of cubic feet a certain number of degrees over time. I’ll just remind you that the longer and harder that the AC has to work, the more you have to pay!

The clothes line has been in use for centuries. There is a reason: it works. It’s practically free. I don’t say that it’s free, because there are a few expenses beyond the initial set up. My children believe that clothespins are either disposable or indestructible. I haven’t quite figured out which. I have watched from my kitchen window as the boys have yanked on shirts, sending pins flying across the yard, while bringing in dry clothes. Of course I correct them and send them back outside to pick up each pin that they have launched, but we always seem to lose a few. After a few launchings, they break. So each spring I head back to the dollar store for yet another set of pins. By the end of summer, I’ll be down to just a few again. I’m happy to spend the $2 on clothespins instead of the $135 it would take to dry clothes inside for 3 months.

Drying clothes: $2 for clothespins vs. $135 for the electric dryer Liz price = 98.5% off! I think that we have set a new record!!!

Summer Savings Series

Well, it’s that time again. Time to pull out the window units and turn on the A/C. Our household holds off as long as we possibly can, and only turn the thermostat down low enough to ensure that I can breathe and that everyone can sleep peacefully. With the addition of air conditioning to our daily lives comes many opportunities to conserve electricity which, in turn, saves us money! That one bill can make us or break us. I can still remember the slight panic last summer when one of our bills approached the $300 mark. Eww, what a sick feeling it gave me. I can also remember the joy on the children’s faces when it was below $100. They were promised ice cream cones from McDonalds as well as time to play on their playground. Their efforts in keeping the electricity in check did not need to go unrewarded. And isn’t $5 for ice cream a small price to pay for a $50 reduction in utility costs? Of course it is.


So this shall be the topic of posts to come: How to keep the electricity bill down without cooking yourself and your family! Hmm, that’s kind of catchy. Kind of icky, but definitely interesting.

Springtime

Oh, what a wonderfully busy time of the year! We look forward with cold dark wintery eyes to the bright sunny days of Spring when we can get outside and enjoy the warm air. Unfortunately, when our schedules are so empty in the colder months, we are tempted to over commit ourselves. We tend for forget how much time and effort go into those wonderful springtime projects.


This has been the case for my Spring. I have, once again, filled my plate a little too full. That is why I have not been writing as frequently as I would have liked. Three children in baseball has been a large portion of our social calendar! I became a consultant for Pampered Chef, which need my attention. Add in a baby chick and garden and all of that free time that we had has all been accounted for.

I will try to carve out a little time during the week in order to get pen to paper, or in this case, fingers to keys before these new ideas and opportunities to be thrifty have been pushed out of my mind in order to remember who brings snacks to Thursday’s game.