Earth hour and energy efficient cooking

On Saturday evening we switched off our power. I had signed the petition at Earth Hour a couple of months ago, and once I give my word, I can't take it back.

We had participated in Earth Hour last year, so I knew that RMan would have no objection.

But - Earth Hour has taken it one step further - they have requested that we take the hour further by commiting to action which takes us beyond the hour.  Make long lasting changes, wherever you can, to reduce your electricity usage.  I like that :-)

This past week we had a few days with overcast skies - threatening rain, but nary a drop on the side of the mountain where we live.  T'is so very dry - the pavement grass is all crispy brown, and even the bushes are all drooping.  So sad.

But, here in cape Town we have a Mediterranean climate - which means we get rain in winter, and Cape Town celebrates that with what they call the "Green Season".  Hotels, bed 'n breakfasts and guest houses offer specials, so do restaurants - all trying to attract business.  It works too - for we get many tourists during that time - well, it doesn't rain every day!  And the Western Cape in winter is stunning!  If we do get snow, then it mainly falls onto the Mountain tops - and mad Capetonians all get in their 4 X 4's and rush off to try and reach the snow so that they can have a snowball fight LOL
I love the rain, and far prefer a wet climate to the winters' which they get upcountry - freezing nights, hot-ish days - but unfortunately all the shopping centres have their warm air conditioners blasting away - so hot, in fact, that when one walks into the centre, you have to strip off your layers of clothing, for fear of fainting in the heat.  Such a waste of energy, I feel.  And up country they get the winter crispy brown grass which we experience at the end of our summer.  Such a depressing sight - especially when your (sun)light is weaker.

Winter should be winter - be that rain or snow.  Sunlight, in my book, does not make winter.

But, with the decrease in sun available to me in our south facing garden, I have had to make a plan, cooking wise.  My solar cooker goes into hibernation in winter - although on the farm I wil be able to use it all year round.

So I tend to make lots of soups and stews.

Moroccan Beef

But I don't make winter food conventionally.

For instance, for Earth Hour, I made Moroccan Beef, with baby potatoes (RMan doesn't like couscous) prunes, butternut and chickpeas.  I left the meat part of the dish to RMan and RSon, and only ate the vegetables and gravy - absolutely delicious.

RSons old toybox, converted into a
hotbox / haybox, filled with shredded paper
from the office.

The meal was as tender as butter.  And I did that with a maximum of only half an hour of cooking (simmering) on my stove top, and 6 - 7 hours of cooking in my hot box.  The hot box really does produce the most tender, tasty food you will ever eat, with a gravy which contains all the goodness of the raw food that you placed in the pot. (In conventional cooking far too much of that goodness escapes in the steam.) And this type of food preparation uses a fraction of the energy that would normally be expended by a stove top meal.  In fact, it uses even less than a slow cooker :-)

And for the bread, which RMan loves to sop up the gravy with, I made a loaf of beer bread in the barbecue...

Bread baked in the barbecue

(I'm not normally so wasterful - usually I would simultaneously do a roast chicken, or something similar, whilst I have the barbecue lit.)  The addition of the unglazed clay floor tile (from the farm) works a treat, for that disperses the heat underneath the grill, and also warms up nicely to assist in baking the base of the bread :-)

We had asked friends to join us for dinner - to share Earth Hour with us.  We had finished eating 7.30pm, so we switched everything off, pulled out the candles, and an old box of Trivial Pursuit from the '80's LOL  What a trip down memory lane!

We didn't play it conventionally, with the board.  Instead we turned it into a type of "Who wants to be a Millionaire" game - the quizmaster (we all took turns) had to pick a question, any question, from the card, and devise four answers, using the correct one as one of the options.  (That's not easy, hey - it really challenges what you think you know!!  In reality we are all the Weakest Links LOL))  Then the players had to jointly decide which was the correct answer.

It was so much fun (well, to be fair I reckon the two bottles of wine helped also) that by the time we realised that Earth Hour was over, it was 12.45 a.m.  We hadn't used any electricity for over 5 hours!

A perfect evening - and enjoyed without any modern conveniences at all!  Why do we think we are so dependent on modern conveniences?  Why do we allow ourselves to be so dependent?  Have we forgotten that sitting round a candlelit table, playing a game with the family, can be fun.

Such a simple pleasure.  And one which we can all afford - for after all, all it is costing us is our time.

My bread recipe

In line with my "don't wait until we're on the farm to try out new idea's" decision, I made up a batch of my bread recipe at the beginning of the week, and it occurred to me, and I was asked by African Bliss, who contacted me, to put the recipe on my blog.

Unfortunately, though, at the moment I am having to cook it in my electric oven in Cape Town - but I also cooked a couple of chickens at the same time - I hate to use an electric oven for only one item.  I can't wait to see how this recipe works in the Dover stove.

It is dead easy - no kneading required - which with my old "tennis elbow" (even though I don't play / have never played tennis) injury it suits me just fine.  The recipe comes from the following site: http://www.motherearthnews.com/Real-Food/Artisan-Bread-In-Five-Minutes-A-Day.aspx?page=2

What you need to do is the following:

Take a large container (with loose fitting lid) and add to it :-

3 cups / 750ml warm water (I find that using water at 107oF / 41oC works brilliantly for me)
3 level teaspoons / 15 gm (1 1/2 sachets) granulated yeast
3 teaspoons / 45gm brown sugar

Mix all the above together and allow to sit until frothy - about 20 - 30 minutes.

Mix together:

1 - 1 1/4 tbs / 20 gm salt (I use either Himalayan Rock salt or Maddon sea salt)
6 1/2 cups / 750gm 50/50 mix of white and brown bread flour (that way I get the men in my life to eat some brown bread without too much fuss - why are most men fixated on white bread??)

When the water/yeast/sugar is frothy slowly add the flour and salt to the mixture - approximately a level cup at a time, stirring to combine.  You can use an electric mixer or food processor with a dough attachment, but it not necessary - a wooden spoon / silicone spoon works great - so rather save the electricity.  All it takes is 5 minutes to mix the flour into the yeast water.  It results in a loose dough which will conform to the container.

Cover loosely (do not use a screw top jar - it could explode from the trapped gases) and set aside to rise for 2 hours at room temperature.  (Longer rising time will not hurt the dough - I have left it for 4 hours)  You can use any amount of the dough after this time, but if you refrigerate it, it is less stricky to work with than dough which is at room temperature.  Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François (the authors of this recipe) recommend that the dough be refrigerated for at least 3 hours before shaping a loaf.

I don't have a pizza wheel, so I use a pliable vegetable cutting board which I liberally dust with cornflour.  This is so that the dough can easily be transferred to the baking stone in your oven.

When you are ready to bake bread, remove the dough container from the fridge and sprinkle some extra flour on the top surface.  Then cut off a large grapefruit sized piece with a serrated knife. Rub a little flour on your hands and holding the dough, stretch and fold over two of the corners to the bottom on all four sides - rotating the ball as you go.  You should end up with dough which has a bunched base of the four corners - this will flatten out during the resting and baking.

Now place your dough on the pizza wheel / cutting board and let it rest uncovered for 40 minutes.

20 - 30 minutes before baking, place your baking stone inside and turn your oven on to 400oF / 200oC.  I don't have a genuine baking stone, so I use one of the extra floor tiles which were left over from our floor - I reckon that a good scrub and then baking at 200oC eliminates 99.9% of the germs.  Also, place an ovenproof container on a lower shelf in the oven - this is to hold the water which is added when you place your dough in the oven.

Dust the top of the bread liberally with flour and slash the top with a serrated knife - a couple of slashes, or a deep cross - whatever.  This helps the dough expand during cooking.

When the oven is at the correct temperature open the door, and with a forward jerking movement slide the dough off the pizza wheel / cutting board and onto the baking stone.  Then quickly pour a cup of hot water into the ovenproof container below and close the door to trap the resulting steam in the oven.

Bake for 30 minutes until it is nicely browned and firm to the touch.

Allow to cool on a wire rack.

It produces the crispiest crust and the most moist centre I have ever eaten.  And it is also good the next day - or even the day after - if the loaf lasts that long!

Return the remaining dough in the container to the fridge and use within 2 weeks. You can apparently even freeze portion sizes in an airtight container and defrost in the refrigerator overnight.

My stove, painting and the verandah

We left Cape Town at 10.45 am on Friday 6th August.  We were only going to leave on Saturday morning, but Negosiegat, in Barrydale, wasn't going to be open on Saturday, as it was the first day of the long weekend (Woman's Day was on Monday 9th).  And we had to get to Negosiegat in order to purchase the Dover stove.  RMan had promised me that the Dover would be in situ by my birthday on Tuesday, and working!

As we were driving we heard the weather report - rain was expected over the weekend, and they were predicting snow on Sunday!  Perfect :-)  If you're not living in, and confined to a caravan, anything is bearable.

After a leisurely drive we arrived in Barrydale at 2.15pm and made straight for Negosiegat.  After choosing our stove, and waiting whilst the storekeeper had it loaded onto the back of his bakkie (double cab) we led the way to our farm.  I was so excited - I had saved for this stove 3 times over the past two years - twice before I had had to use the money for other more essentials, but now, finally, I had it.  (I make salad dressing for a few restaurants locally, and had saved up the 'profit' from that.)

This first photo was taken with my phone camera just after it had been placed in it's position in the kitchen - the quality of the photo isn't so good, but I was too excited to care.

Things were looking positive - now all we had to do was install the chimney!  A piece of cake, I thought.  Easier said than done.  The height of the outlet had been placed as high as possible on the internal wall in order to utilize the heat from the chimney as well - only trouble was the hole was made using scaffolding and now all we had was a 3.2mtr aluminium ladder or a homemade 4.5mtr ladder - the latter being very dubious.  It was made out of builders planks which had been left on site - it definitely works, but the steps are +/- .75mtr apart - not easy to scale and work from.  And the chimney outlet was 4mtrs high.  So homemade ladder it had to be.  It is so heavy that it takes 4 grown men to move into place...

   

But the chimney got installed!  RMan discovered that the bend which had been plastered into the wall a couple of months ago wasn't at exactly the correct angle, but he persevered and managed to get it to fit the straight sections.

Just a bit of advice regarding new Dover Stoves - because of the black paint that its' coated with, when you first light it the paint visibly smokes and gives off a very unpleasant smell - if possible I would recommend lighting it outside before it is installed.  We managed to get rid of the fumes through opening all the windows - it took about an hour to an hour-an-a-half to sort out.  Do so wish we'd been forwarned though.

Hey! Hey! Hey! We have a working Dover stove - on my birthday and just in time!  It was freezing!  That morning we had woken to ice cold thick mist - I took a wander down our driveway and snapped this shot:

Yes, that is the caravan and house in the background.  When the mist lifted and the clouds cleared off the mountain we saw that they were full of snow - it literally covered the top 1/4 of them!  Brilliant!  I l-o-v-e snow - must be my British roots.  And now we had the wherewithall to keep warm!

Admittedly, the outside chimney was a little more difficult to adjust, but a plan was made so that we could use it during this visit.

I was absolutely no help - and felt helpless.  It was very dangerous as the wind was howling and I wasn't happy about RMan being up the wonky ladder at the best of times.  But he persevered and when the first puff of smoke came out of the chimney you would've thought that a new pope had just been elected!

It was a really nice feeling when our kettle started boiling(whistling) on the Dover stove for the first time.  I managed to get the oven temperature (together with the baking stone) up to 180oC - only need 20oC more and I can bake my no knead Artisan bread...

Friends of ours in Rietkuil, Neels and Petro, came round in the evening with a bottle of bubbly, some home grown arum lillies (to go with the beautiful yellow roses which RMan bought me) some dry wood (for the Dover stove) and a bottle of homemade preserves. What a lovely evening. Couldn't have asked for a nicer birthday.

Whilst our time had been taken up with installing the Dover stove and the chimney, we had also arranged for our builder and his team to be there - RMan Saturday and on Monday (at double time wages, being a public holiday) they proceeded to start building the wall.  3 days, 1200 bricks and 10 bags of cement later we have the skeleton - it still has to be filled, compacted and the slab thrown - but the vision of sitting on it on a hot summers' evening, with the protection of the house behind us, and out of the wind, is becoming a reality.

We also got the builder to finish building and plastering the walls of the kitchen porch - one more item to cross off the list.

And finally, we also managed to give the internal walls a coat of Harlequin low VOC plaster primer.  Low VOC is definitely the way forward - we couldn't smell a thing - and we slept in the room - and if we can't smell anything then there are minimal fumes leeching into the atmosphere!

It took a day a wall to paint - therefore to give the walls two coats of low VOC paint will take us roughly 10 days - allowing two days for the bathroom and small passage as well.

All in all a very constructive "long" weekend's work.  We extended the weekend by three days, only arriving back in Cape Town on Thursday afternoon - now why does that always make me feel guilty... we are allowed to take time off.

My first attempt at baking bread

On 31 May 2010 I received my precious solar oven.  It was the wrong model and it arrived damaged and I am (still) trying to get that sorted out - but that I'll leave for another post.

But I am too impatient to wait for summer to try baking bread in my solar oven.  And I don't have the Dover stove yet.  So, after much research on the Internet and reading a snippet on another blog I follow ( http://thefieldlab.blogspot.com/ )  I came across this site:

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Real-Food/Artisan-Bread-In-Five-Minutes-A-Day.aspx?page=2

Brilliant - I had found a bread recipe which didn't entail the strength, energy and time required to knead bread dough.  Time - not a problem - neither is energy - but strength.  I had tennis elbow a few years ago, and, due to the dreaded cortisone injections which were required to assist the healing of that elbow, I have been left with a right arm which is a mere shadow of it's former self, strength-wise.

And I had a "baking stone" - I had brought a spare unglazed clay floor tile back from the farm which I scrubbed really clean.

So, on Wednesday I proceeded to whip up a batch of dough.  I added the yeast to the warm water (I measured the temperature of the water with a normal (sterilised) medical thermometer :-) which is all I had available, to ensure it was the required 40oC) and let that stand for approximately 30 minutes whilst it "frothed" up.  After mixing in the flour and salt I let the dough stand on my kitchen counter for the next 3 - 4 hours before putting it in my fridge overnight.  Then yesterday afternoon, as I planned a rare oven-roasted chicken for supper (the oven would be put to multi-use - our electricity cost has just been increased by 25.8% so I am very conscious of saving power whenever and wherever possible) I placed the baking stone inside and turned on my oven to the required 230oC, and, removing a portion of the dough from the refrigerated batch, let it rest on the counter until the oven was hot enough.

I put the dough on the baking stone, and placed the cup of water underneath and closed the door - and waited with baited breath (and a torch so that I could monitor the progress through the glass as my oven light doesn't work).

Seriously, it turned out perfectly.  And was so easy!!!!

The verdict of my family - brilliant!  The entire loaf got wiped by my husband, son and a couple of slices for me, naturally.

Now I want to try it in our gas grill - and details on that can be found at:  http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/

There is absolutely no reason why anyone has to buy bread - it couldn't be easier to make your own loaf.