Northern California Nesties
Dear Community,

Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.

If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.

Thank you.

Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.

Cooking ideas?

We'll likely be housing displaced disaster victims in the coming days/weeks/who knows. We need to conserve as much energy as possible and won't have hot water (aside from the ability to boil it on the stove). Can you think of meals that would be relatively easy to cook for groups, won't dirty tons of dishes or have to cook for long periods of time? Are crock pots smart to use, or will that use more energy than turning on the stove or oven for a normal meal?

Knowing the power could go out at any time, we'll stock up on canned foods/dry ready to eat stuff, etc. I'm going to make as much bread as I can today. Any other ideas would be greatly appreciated.  

Re: Cooking ideas?

  • Wow you're such a trooper and generous to open your home. I'm sure it will be so appreciated. I think a slow cooker/crock pot uses little energy. Do you have a toaster oven? They're also supposed to be lower energy (of course cooking for a large group it might still make more sense to use an oven). Things like soup and chili would go far. Maybe something like sloppy joes could stretch chili, too? I know they're a little different but you could make sloppy joes with chili. I'll keep thinking...
  • I would keep things simple. You can make large quantities of rice, meat and veggies that can all go together as a nice complete meal and you won't go broke over. Obviously the staples there will be different here so I'm not sure what else to put out there. Pasta (like spaghetti) is simple but I'm not sure what you have available...
    Warning No formatter is installed for the format bbhtml
  • Wow. Crazy. Good for you.

    I'd suggest pasta. You can throw anything into it. Have any vegetables around you can eat raw? (separate from the pasta.) Fruit?

    My favorite place on earth: The Amargosa Valley.
    image
  • I think a crock pot does use less energy (220 watts vs about 3,000 watts) but if you're worried about the power going out, I wouldn't want to be using the crock pot where I need it to cook for a full 8-10 hours.  I'd suggest the usual suspects:  spaghetti, chili (with canned beans), minestrone soup (with canned beans).  I'll be thinking and see what else I can come up with.
  • I'd also go with cooked rice and some sort of meat with (any) veggies. You can quickly stir fry them, and the rice will be filling.

    I think chili and pasta are also good ideas. Keep some instant noodles handy: they're not healthy but quick to prepare if you just have hot water.

    You and your DH are in my thoughts...

  • Can you use the crockpot to cook batches of items?

    Ok, so let's think in terms of camping...can you get bars-granola bars to have on hand?

    baked beans or any kind of beans might work for big groups and go well with rice

    thinking of you and your DH. 

     

    Warning No formatter is installed for the format bbhtml
  • What about a big pot of soup?  The bad thing is you can warm it up if you don't have power.

    If you are making lots of bread maybe you could serve PBJ for breakfast or lunch.

  • Thanks guys, great ideas. Good point about the crock pot possibly losing power half way through cooking. All this should get us through well, and I'm pretty sure I can get my hands on all the staples mentioned here. Thanks again, and keep Japan in your thoughts.
Sign In or Register to comment.
Choose Another Board
Search Boards