Green Fuzzy Panda 6: the open fire

 

This is the most traditional method of cooking and uses wood or charcoal to cook. In rural areas wood is collected for the fire. In more affluent areas open fire cooking is more a recreational pastime as in the braai and special charcoal briquettes or bundles of firewood are bought for the fire.

Advantages of an open fire

1. In general the fuel source, wood or charcoal is a renewable source.

2. The fire gives warmth and is an area where fellowship is shared.

3. The heat is instantaneous and cooking can be fast.

4. If freely available wood is collected the energy is free.

Disadvantages of an open fire

1. Although the fuel is renewable, very often the people involved do not plant more trees but continue to ravage wooded areas.

2. An open fire can get out of control and cause death, damage and devastation.

3. Often things are burned that emit dangerous fumes eg painted wood, plastic.

4. It is very easy to burn food.

5. Usually causes pollution to the atmosphere although taken overall compared to electricity generation, the amount of pollution might not be that significant.

Green Fuzzy Panda 5. Make your own hot box

 

You will need: A square box or container at least 5 cm larger than your pot on all sides, 2-3 metres fabric, newspaper, small pieces of polystyrene as used in packing.

Method: Take the following measurements: diameter of pot = a, height of pot = b, Height of box = c , side of box = d.

Cut out 2 squares of newspaper, one with sides of a, one with sides of d. Fold them both diagonally in quarters and cut out one quarter of each.

On a large sheet of newspaper cut out the following pattern.   Add 1,5 cm all around for seams.   Using the newspaper pattern, cut 4 identical pieces from the fabric.

Sew all 4 pieces together, right sides together , leaving one diagonal open. Turn right side out. Half fill the cushion with the polystyrene and then close up the opening. Arrange the cushion in the box with the base (d) downwards. Form the narrow top part into a nest inside the cushion. It should be just big enough for your largest pot. Make another cushion for the lid out of two square pieces of material the length of the base of the box. Fill with the polystyrene. Alternatively you could use a pillow as the lid.

Green Fuzzy Panda 4

 

The Hot Box
In days gone by farmers’ wives knew that if you heated up porridge to boiling point for five minutes before bed, it would continue cooking if the pot was placed in a box and completely surrounded by hay. The next morning there would be a
warm breakfast. They called it a Hay Box. This is the basis of the Hot Box, also sometimes known as the Wonder Box. It relies on the principle of insulation. Food heated through for five or ten minutes and then well insulated, will continue
to cook as the heat is kept in.
At the simplest, place the pot on a dish cloth on the middle of a blanket. Fold the blanket around and over the pot and put it in a corner out of the way. The Wonder Box consisted of a specially shaped cushion inside a box and was  marketed by various charities. Any good insulation can be used in a Hot Box, even balls of crumpled up newspaper.

How to use a Hot Box for cooking.
Use the smallest pot that will take the amount of food you are cooking. The fuller the pot , the more efficient the cooking. Any source of heating can be used:- open fire, biogel stove, gas, paraffin or electricity. Heat the food and
enough water in the pot with the lid on and allow to boil for 5 or 10 minutes. Switch off the heat and place the pot upright in the box so that it is surrounded by the insulation or cushion. Leave for the appropriate amount of time (at least one and a half hours but it will continue to stay hot for up to 10 hours).

Recipes

Rice
Boil 2 cups of water and 1tsp salt and a stock cube. Add one cup of rice and allow to boil for another 5 minutes with the lid on but allowing a small gap for steam to escape. Place in Hot Box for an hour and a half.

Mielie meal
Use the quantities of meal and water you would normally use for the consistency you require. Boil for 5 minutes and then keep in the Hot Box for at least an hour or until required.

Chicken and Lentil soup
Add 4 cups of water to a chicken carcass, 1 tsp salt, 1 chicken stock cube, 1 cup lentils, a chopped onion, chopped or grated carrot or any vegetables of your choice. Boil for ten minutes then place in Hot Box for at least 2 hours. Can start
it before work and come back for supper. Remove the bones, scraping off any chicken still adhering to them. Liquidise if you prefer a smoother soup.

Foods that can be cooked in a Hot Box
The Hot Box is ideal for foods that cook slowly. It is excellent for rice, stews, one pot meals, dried legumes, vegetables,
mealie meal, soups. It works well at keeping most things hot and is ideal for transporting a hot dish for eating with friends. It is not suitable for foods that need brisk boiling like pasta.

Green Fuzzy Panda 3

Simple ways to save power.

· We are all aware of the fact that the pot or pan is not hot enough as soon as we switch the hot plate on. It takes a little while for the plate and pot to heat up. In the same way, it takes a little while for them to cool down so if we switch off the power about 5 minutes before the food is cooked, it will still continue cooking in the hot pot on the hot plate.

· Use the kettle sparingly. A kettle is rated at about 2 kilowatts. Boil only enough water for your needs. If you are making one cup of coffee, boil one cup of water. This reduces the amount of time the appliance is working. Another option is to use a thermos flask or pump pot. Boil a full kettle and then pour any unused boiling water into the pump pot. For the next two hours you can use the water for making coffee or if you need it really boiling for tea, pour it back into the kettle and it will take much less energy to heat it up the last couple of degrees.

· Use the microwave instead of the hot plate as often as possible. Most food cooks faster in a microwave.

· Other options are a pressure cooker (which cooks faster because the high pressure enables the temperature to get much higher) an electric frying pan or steamer, where different foods can cook at the same time by stacking up on top of one another.

· On an electric stove top, use pots and pans with flat bottoms to maximize surface area and use a hot plate the same size as the pot.

· If you have to use the oven, make sure the seals fit properly to reduce heat loss. Test by closing a piece of paper between the door and the oven. If the paper slips out, you could be losing a lot of heat. Replace the seal to avoid wasting energy and money.

· Cook more than one dish in the oven at a time or one pot dishes on a stove top.

· Consider cooking in bulk and freezing, using the microwave to heat the dish.

· Thaw food overnight in the fridge rather than in the microwave.

· Keep the lid on when possible to reduce heat loss

· Dishes requiring browning in an oven eg macaroni and cheese use a lot of electricity just to get the cheese topping browned. Five minutes under a TV grill will give the same result with far less energy consumption.

Macaroni Cheese browned under a TV grill

• It costs almost the same to buy a roast chicken from most supermarkets as a fresh one. You save not only the electricity that you would use to cook it, but also the human energy you would use.
• Use insulation. We are so used to the concept of warming up food quickly in a microwave that we no longer try to keep it hot. Any insulating material wrapped around a pot or dish will help keep it hotter for longer. Examples are – newspaper, corrugated cardboard, blankets, packaging materials. The Wonderbox is an example of how food can not only be kept warm but continue to cook without the use of any electricity at all.

Green Fuzzy Panda 2. How much energy does it use?

 

Using electricity efficiently in cooking.

The kilowatt (1000 watts) is a measure of power or energy used by electrical appliances and is usually printed on the apparatus. A small hot plate would have a rating of about 1,5kw while a large one would be closer to 2kw. We pay for electricity by the kilowatt.hour which is how much energy an appliance of 1kw will use in an hour. We can’t change the watts of our appliances, but we can change the amount of time we use them for. The following ratings have been supplied by City Power

Appliance		Rating (kw)
Stove	Small hot plate on high	1,5
	Small hot plate on low	0,35
	Large hot plate on high	2,0
	Large hot plate on low	0,5
	Oven (approximately 200° C)	2,0
Electric frying pan		1,5
Microwave		0,7 -0,9
Sandwich toaster		0,7
TV grill		1,8

It might appear from the table above that it is easy to save electricity by using hot plates on low rather than high. This would only be true if the food cooked in the same amount of time. For example if you use a hot plate of 2kw on high for 30 minutes or one on low at 0,5kw for 2 hours, you use the same amount of electricity – 1kwh. To be efficient you need to be able to optimise time as well as power.

Green Fuzzy Panda

In the next couple of blogs I am going to be looking at energy efficient cooking.

Introduction

We are all aware of the energy crisis and of the fact that electricity is going to become more and more expensive. Responsible people have already exchanged their incandescent light bulbs for the energy saving equivalent. They have turned down their geyser and insulated it with a geyser blanket. They switch off unused appliances and lights. Gas heaters have become more popular.

Energy does not only apply to electricity. Fossil fuels when burned provide heat energy. This is how we generate our electricity by burning large amounts of fossil fuels and then converting the heat energy produced to electrical energy. In the process of conversion, a lot of the energy is lost. For heating and cooking many people go the direct route and burn something to use the energy produced. People without access to electricity have only this option and they will burn wood, coal, paraffin, gas to cook food and heat their homes. Wherever there are open fires there is the danger of houses burning down, people being burnt and toxic fumes being given off. However, with proper care this can be a fairly efficient way of utilising energy, especially if the fuel is renewable eg wood, charcoal, biofuels.

Then there is human energy. In our modern hectic world, we try to conserve our energy – to do things quickly and efficiently. Cooking is no exception. We will be looking at ways to use energy efficiently in our cooking.

Today I killed a computer.

Today I killed a computer. It was easy really - I merely wished it dead. The deceased in question is about ten years old and lived in the Science department at our school in a store room cum prep room between two class rooms. Everybody used it and everybody complained about it. Besides its age, and possibly because of it, it was very slow. It took me approximately half an hour to log in. However, we were lucky to have it. Normally only heads of department get computers. So we put up with the problems.

You see, computers play a game with people. The rules are fairy simple. The computer tries everything it is capable of to frustrate the humans. If the humans lose their tempers, or walk around the rest of the day in a bad mood, or physically strike or kick the computer, the computer wins. If the humans display patience and good humour no matter what, then the humans win.

We were about even. Three days ago it finally dawned on us that we didn't have a number of faulty CD's and DVD's that couldn't be read by a computer. We had a computer with a broken CD drive.

The process to rectify it goes as follows: I send an e mail to our computer fundi. He replies in a week or so to say he will look at it. Then I meet him in the passage and he tells me he couldn't get into the lab because it was locked because he came after school the day before. Like we are going to leave a store of dangerous chemicals and interesting equipment unlocked in a school full of teenagers!

My colleage and I were discussing the problem. We both agreed that we needed a new computer. However they wouldn't give us one unless it was irreparably broken.
"Well, perhaps it could accidentally fall off the table," I suggested.
He pointed to the tower on the floor.
"It doesn't have anywhere more to fall. How about if some acid got spilled on it?"
I thought that it might look suspicious if acid got down the back of the computer under the table.

So I sent the e mail.

Yesterday I was testing our entry for the Technology Olympiad after school. Then I thought it would be just as well to enter our results and they were done. The computer screen was blank and wouldn't respond to anything so I assumed a power cut had switched off the computer and I switched it on again. I typed in my name and password and then made myself of cup of coffee while I waited for it to load my personal settings. After half an hour I read through the team's report and corrected all the spelling mistakes. Loading was still going on. At four o clock I decided that it was stupid to spend time after school waiting for a computer when I could just as well record the results the next day. So I went home.

This morning the computer was still loading my settings. I rebooted it and went to do some practical demonstrations for two grade nine classes. At break the computer was still loading my settings.

Not being able to send an e mail, I sent an SMS.

To be honest, the computer won this round. I was miserable the rest of the day, being unable to do anything I wanted and unable to read any e mails which might have informed me of the programme for the Science Expo on Saturday. Finally I gave in and went to discuss my frustration with our vice principal who takes an interest in the school computers.

Towards the end of the school day the computer fundi came to investigate. It seems our computer was hanging.

"This is quite an old computer," he told us. "You need a new one. This one's dead. I'll speak to the vice principal about getting you one."

So the computer might have won the battle, but we won the war. We killed the computer by wishing it dead. We have declared tomorrow a day of celebration - I mean mourning.