I regularly cook much more than we need for a meal, and regularly freeze meals for later (usually for me and my wife to take to work, for lunch). Also, I batch cook things like chili, Tomato/meat sauces for pasta, shepherds pies, lasagnes, curries etc. Then just take whatever we fancy for our evening meal out of the freezer as we leave for work, and then reheat/cook it when we get home in the evening. Doing it like this is particularly good for portion control and for knowing just what the ingredients are. So, for example, my shepherds pie has extra vegetables included. Also, I have some glazed pots which are just the right size for the three of use, which I use for the lasagnes and shepherds pies, so it helps with portion control.

You just LOVE quoting my posts without reading them, don't you?

Do people really think about how much money it costs to have the oven on for a while compare to how much it costs to use a microwave? Surely it's only pennies.

Everyone would be horrified with me, I often boil the kettle, wander off, forget about it and then go back and boil it again. Imagine the minuscule amounts of pennies I'm wasting then!

I don't do jacket spuds in anything but the oven, a fresh potato, oiled and salted, straight on the oven rack for about an hour and 20 mins, lovely.

I'm shocked

I used to do my jackets in the microwave, but then a year or so ago I started shoving them in the oven ... and I won't go back.

I do tend to put them in the microwave for 10 mins (when there are 2 jackets) and then finish them off in the oven. Yummy.

Haven't bought spuds for ages, we just row our own and use them for chips, roasts, boiled, mashed and baked.
The flavour f home grown spuds is so much better, I couldn't go back to buying supermarket ones again.

It's the same with all the other stuff we grow. Peas hardly ever make it back to the kitchen. they get eaten quicker than we can carry them back

Proof comes from onions, shop bought onions have no affect on me when I'm slicing them, but home grown ones, I'm crying like a baby!

That's an issue with a kettle because it has an element that needs to be covered in water. A slow cooker has a pot, and the food is inside the pot and doesn't go near the elements, which are outside the pot. They don't put much heat out anyway.

My usual problem is having too much liquid. I have taken to putting roast meat on a raised platform, else it ends up in a cm or so of juice and effectively boiled rather than roasted.

I've not tried roast potatoes yet. I'd be more inclined to have them for lunch than dinner, so an 8 hour cooking time wouldn't work.

[quote=An Thropologist;79982248]
Apologies for this quote, as I can tell by your previous quote An Thropologist, that this one is going to be messed up.

Perhaps moderately cheaper just for one jacket potato, but not for more.

You see I'm a very thrifty person, hate waste, and look for savings each day, I've tried most methods of saving money, and usually using electricity over gas doesn't work out cheaper.

And, when one has the oven on, one can take advantage of the extra heat during the cold months.


Microwaves can and do leak, in the US, they rarely own kettles, and 'nuke' everything, puts me right off!


No, I can promise you I definitely read your post.

I dont know how much it is, I dont cook spuds in the microwave personally but I know a lot of people cant afford to have the gas on for an hour and a half.

Really? A lot of people? Surely it doesn't use that much, surely the difference between microwave and oven would be pennies.

I've never heard of energy costs before as being a reason for using a microwave and for not cooking.

When we were on £89 a week between us me ad my OH would often have a sandwich or something cold rather than something warm to save money

Not if you manually fix the quote tags...


Not having a kettle is just wrong, of course.

A microwave that leaks enough microwaves to cause harm is very faulty indeed. You would need to have badly damaged the door for this to be possible, or managed to operate it with the door open by defeating the interlocks (or having them all in a failed state simultaneously). Even then, the risk would be through tissue heating, and mainly to the corneas. Are there any recorded cases of cataracts induced by a faulty domestic microwave oven?