Efficient cooking

The photos are not related to cooking. I took a lot of pictures recently of a sunset, I will miss the Ks sunsets. You can sort of see Tad to the right of the photo.


The children are playing in my construction waste, bits of 2x4s, drywall, hardibacker, tile scraps. They set up little games for people and little animals and play their world for them. They spend their offtime doing this.


So onto the cooking. Between crock pots and a traditional oven/stove that is electrical-crock pot almost always wins. However, enter a gas stove top and it depends. They use a different measurement, and the price of gas isnt always the same. The biggest thing I have learned is this. If you have a fire pit/fireplace/wood stove and cast iron pots/pans/skillets-you are already prepared to cook in an efficient manner. My friend Amanda cooks this way for much of the winter. I have not known another person who could save money on gas/electric bill better than her in the winter, both for her heating and cooking. Her home stays very toasty and her stove top cooked meals are excellent and cost effective. This is the difference in frugal and stingy. I want a warm house and good food, not spend the winter frozen eating foods that use little stovetop.

We are moving to Ak, and we are making a lot of changes now and in route. We are selling most of our household goods and will be living on a much smaller scale. We have been recycling, gardening, preserving food, raising livestock, using washable vs throw away items and many other things for 8 yrs now. Not all of those things, the livestock was only 3 yrs. My children wore cloth diapers, and so would any subsequent children. I make most of our clothes, and try to buy on sale/used what I do not make. I recycle even our worn out clothes. The little things that I/we do are both for the environment and to avoid being wasteful of funds.

We are excited about some of our new ideas, we are adding on to the list of things that we already do and plan to drastically reduce the amount of money and space that we use.