Archive for January 11, 2008
The Power Cooking Challenge
I love to cook, and I love having good tools to cook with. Sharp knives, big shiney mixing bowls, wisks – these all make me very happy for some reason. Over the past couple of years I’ve managed to collect a few nice gadgets for my kitchen that have brought my cooking to a whole new, more delicious level, and I really don’t want to live without them. The problem? They’re electronic, meaning they’re diabolical and highly guilt-worthy.
Anyone who has ever whipped egg whites or heavy cream into frothy white peaks by hand can relate to my love for the electronic hand mixer. Hand mixers and cuisinarts and coffee grinders are the tools that separate the modern cook from the cave man (who I believe is known to have bought his coffee pre-ground). These tools hold places of honor in my kitchen, and although I certainly do not have to plug-in every time I make a meal, I am sure to bust them out at least once a week. And every time I weep the tears of a thousand lost kilowatt hours.
So, should I abandon power-cooking altogether? Fat chance. You’ll have to pry that cuisinart out of my cold, dead hands to get me to give it up. But I’m also not willing to live with the guilt.
The challenge: get a small generator that I can power myself – using solar, wind or human energy – and run my small electronics off of it. I found this online – Human Power Generator – and it looks pretty sweet, but it requires making it myself and I’m not very confident in my skills as an electrician. In fact, all I can find online, are more sites like this that instruct you in making your own generator. Why doesn’t anyone manufacture small human-powered generators for running home electronics? WHYYYY!!???
This is frustrating. Please write to me if you’ve got any leads. I’m going to keep working on this, and I’ll definitely let you know if I find anything.
Flower Bulb Update
Remember that post I wrote about a month ago about giving out second-hand pots full of flower bulbs for christmas? Well, I just wanted to let you know that it worked out nicely – by the time Christmas rolled around the bulbs had grown nice tall green stalks, and now they’re blooming. This is one of the paperwhites that I kept for myself (there’s nothing wrong with giving yourself a little something for Christmas, right?).
