Recently we found ourselves without a toaster oven so we decided to try a small air fryer (convection oven). To our surprise, we grew to love it and now we rarely use our regular oven. Not only does the air fryer cook food quickly, but you can set it and cook without watching over it. Food turns out deliciously browned, and you use less oil than pan frying and much less oil than deep frying.
The energy used is much less than heating up your oven. According to an article on cnet.com, the cost per hour of cooking in an air fryer is much lower than your regular oven, as shown in the chart below.
Cost per hour of cooking
Gas oven
40 cents
Electric oven
52 cents
Air fryer
25 cents
Some of our favorite air fryer items are chicken, Brussels sprouts, french “fried” potatoes, fish and open-faced grilled cheese. You can also use it for reheating leftovers. A special treat in the air fryer is onion rings, which are actually healthy since they are not deep fried.
Air fryers come in different sizes, ranging from about two to eight quarts. We wanted something that would not take up much counter space, so we went with a small one. Our two quart/liter model works well for the two of us, since we added a rack to allow us to cook two levels at once.
If you look online, you’ll also find specialized baking pans, parchment liners and other accessories to suit your particular needs. There are also many cookbooks available too. Our DREO came with several recipes to get us started.
We can’t imagine a household that would not benefit from and have fun using an air fryer.
For years I’ve bought cartons and bottles of various nut and seed milks at the store, but commercial vegan milks add gums, oils and emulsifiers with questionable health effects. Recently I’ve made my own nut milks, in order to have control of the ingredients and to be able to create milks with a combination of nuts, because combinations of various nuts often taste better than a single type of nut. I also love not having any cartons to throw out.
The general rule for making nut milks is you combine one part solid ingredients to four parts water. If I can, I soak the nuts overnight beforehand. If I forget to do that, the milk still turns out well. Normally I combine a half cup of nuts with two cups of water and use the blender on high for about a minute. Then I strain the mixture through a fine metal screen or nut bag and add glycerin vanilla extract to taste. The remaining pulp is also delicious in itself. I eat it with a bit of maple syrup.
Have fun experimenting with various combinations. I like almond, walnut, hemp and coconut milk for the taste and for the omega 3 fatty acids.
When the holiday season approaches, it’s time to think about gifts. How about presents and wrapping that don’t end up as landfill? One answer is to buy Amazon or Visa gift cards. Yet it’s often more rewarding to find something more personalized.
Consider giving experiences such as theater tickets, restaurant or massage gift certificates. Sometimes a card that includes an invitation to come to a home cooked dinner, go to a restaurant, take a hike, attend a crafts class or other activity together is much appreciated.
Choice of wrapping is another opportunity for less waste and added creativity. Since much holiday wrapping paper has foil or a plastic coating, it is usually not compostable or recyclable. Huge amounts end up in the trash each December. It’s fun to come up with alternate solutions and its likely your recipients will appreciate and learn from your efforts. Invite your friends to a wrapping party to trade ideas and supplies.
Sometimes you don’t need to buy anything to create an appealing gift wrap. There are many ways you can reuse items to wrap gifts as long as they are still in good shape. Consider gift bags, tote bags, jars, tins, baskets and boxes. Wrapping can be newspaper, maps, brown bags, cloth or scarves and can include decorations such as cloth ribbons and ornaments.
You can give second hand store items a second life. Look for holiday ornaments, brooches, scarves, silk flowers, wooden boxes, baskets and other items to dress up your gifts. In fact, you may even find gifts at these shops as well. Sometimes the wrapping can be part of the gift, as in the case of a scarf, apron or tea towel.
Many of us have brown kraft or tissue paper in the house. Using either as wrapping along with some twine or yarn is a good way to go. Be sure to avoid plastic tapes. You can add fir twigs, herbs, pine cones or dried flowers to dress it up. Plain tissue paper is compostable as long as there is no foil or glitter. Recyclable wrapping papers are also available online, along with wrapping cloths and fabric bags.
As you can see, there are many creative, fun options to avoid wrapping paper that ends up in the trash the next day.
My mother occasionally made soup when I was growing up. I never thought about it much until about fifteen years ago when I noticed the volume of vegetable trimmings we were generating. One day we decided to start putting all the various vegetable trimmings like carrot, celery and onion ends into the freezer, along with chicken bones. When the bag filled up, we would put the mixture into the slow cooker, cover with water and make soup stock. Once the stock was ready, we would make great, healthy soup with the strained stock and whatever else we had in the house that seemed good to add to the mix.
We discovered that we were much less likely to waste food by making soup this way. We consumed many more vegetables as well. Not only did we use up the produce and meat that we had in the fridge to make soup, but we also made use of raw vegetables and bones that would otherwise go in the compost or trash. We would also freeze old lettuce and other vegetables that were almost ready for the compost bin, thus using all that material for soup stock as well.
Years later, we’ve made countless pots of super-nutritious, tasty soup, have saved money, improved our health and had lots of fun in the process. We now use an Instant Pot, because it can slow cook and pressure cook. Soup stock that used to take several hours on the stove or in the slow cooker now takes about two and a half hours. If I make a bean soup, I just toss the beans, vegetables, spices and soup stock into the Instant Pot using the soup stock and soup is ready to serve in about half an hour.
Cost Savings
Today I decided to estimate the cost of a 96 ounce pot of white bean soup and compare that to the cost of prepared soups from the store. The total cost of 1/4 package of organic celery, 1/4 package of conventional carrots (2 lb. package), one yellow onion (from a 3 lb. bag), one pound of white beans and some garlic and spices is about $4.00. That means $4.00 / 96 oz = $.04 per ounce. I did not add in the cost of the home made stock, because those items would normally be discarded. Compare that to:
Wolfgang Puck White Bean Soup @ $2.89 for 14.5 ounces ($.19/ounce)
Alessi Tuscan White Bean Soup @ $2.99 for 6 ounces ($.49/ounce)
Comparisons by total price:
96 ounces of Progresso: $16.32 (savings of $12.32)
96 ounces of Wolfgang Puck: $18.24 (savings of $14.24)
96 ounces of Alessi: $47.04 (savings of $42.04)
You just can’t beat the low price, fun and nutritional benefits of soup made from scratch!
Additional Benefits
There are even more benefits from making your own soup and stock at home:
You get to completely control the flavor of your soup.Add spices and herbs or other ingredients, to your taste.
You get to control all the ingredients, and their proportions.You can choose all organic, or not, add as many or as few vegetables as you like.
You get to control how much sodium is in your soup.Most commercial soup has a high level of sodium.Add as little or as much salt as you like, including salts other than just sodium chloride.
If you make a large batch of soup, you can freeze most of it in plastic containers, and if you make batches of soup on a regular basis and freeze most of it, you can enjoy all kinds of different soup whenever you want by thawing out one of the containers.
In making your own soup, you are avoiding the manufacture and transportation of metal containers and packaging, another form of savings, but in this case savings for the environment.
