Update on the wonderful wonderbag, canning and power bills!
I got myself a big cup of coffee and the fire is going in the wood stove this morning. Best time to get some time to myself, the rest of the family is still sleeping. I thought I'd do some updates while enjoying my coffee.
The one thing we've all been waiting to try was canned stew meat. We love stew and we usually have to keep it going on the stove for an entire afternoon. Now I've finally canned some stew meat and one jar pushed out all of the liquid in the canner so we had that for dinner. I'm guessing I overfilled it or the rubber seal was off on the jar. The meat was perfectly tender and with a bit more salt it's going to be exactly like we want it. I did 6 jars and I have more meat in the freezer waiting to be canned. The butcher where I bought pork before has some really nice prices for beef so I'll be buying more now that I know it's good for canning. I still have that fear about eating the things I can, but I'm working on it and the more we do I think the more confident I'll get eating it and serving it to my family.
I found a neat function on the website for the electric company we have, I can see how much kWh we use every day in a bar graph. I can tell that we've done a great job lowering the use of electricity. We had our highest peak in November at 193kWh and when we started heating with wood we had the lowest at 42kWh during February. I just looked and we used only 34kWh a couple of days ago. Earlier this winter we used 120-160 kWh and now we never get over 80 kWh in a day. Even with the stove and the washing machine going we stay around 65kWh. I wasn't sure what it would actually do on the bill with all the fees and taxes, but even if we went without wood for a couple of weeks (the guy we bought wood from didn't have anything dry enough to sell) we still lowered the bill with 47%. That's so nice! My urge to weep every now and then just thinking about the bills are now gone. We'll probably get even better at this before next winter, we are all working towards wasting less. Some small changes has already been done, like we all got a new toothbrush mug, if we don't leave the hot water running while brushing our teeth that's about 40 minutes less every day. Just by being conscious about how we use things makes us better at wasting less without sacrificing anything.
I haven't had the chance to do any big meals in my wonderbag yet, but I've done yoghurt and it's great for rice! I boil the rice for about five minutes and then I place it in the wonderbag while I'm preparing the rest of our meal, when we're all done and ready to eat the rice is steaming hot. Wonderful!
I made yoghurt about a week ago, no buzzing noice from the dehydrator all night was so lovely! I did a testrun with 2 litres of milk in a small bucket and it turned out perfect.
I filled three glass bottles with hot water and put them around the bucket, then I refilled them before I went to bed. When I refilled them the yoghurt was just below 40 C.
I've learned to make yoghurt at about 38-42 C to get it as thick as I can. I filled the bottles with water about 52-54 C and the wonderbag still kept the temperatures for 6 hours after I refilled the bottles. It was done in 8 hours in the wonderbag.
Now I have to get going with my day. I hope you have a great day!
Until next time, be well.
//S
That is so cool. I must admit I had never heard of the wonder bag so I had to look that up. It is amazing how much electricity you can use and not even be aware you're a hog. This little device is awesome.
When we lived in the barn and had no electricity, we had 4 solar panels. We were conserving at every corner. I learned quickly that the coffee pot or hair dryer would drain every ounce of saved power on the battery. A quick learning experience . We have solar at our house now and I love watching the output. Yesterday with the sun and the glare from the snow we put out more power than ever. During our first Spring and Summer we had no electric bill. That was nice! Great job on your canning and the yogurt. I haven't canned any meat yet. I feel like you do when I open a jar of tomatoes. I get nervous too eating my first canned foods from last year :)
Thank you, it's comforting to hear I'm not alone to be a bit nervous. It sounds like a dream to me, no electricity bill. I wouldn't mind that! It's good to know about solar and snow, we have a off grid cabin so we talked about getting solar. We're already planning on spending time there during early spring so that's helpful. We've felt so reliant on the electric company that being able to lower the bills feels great, all the things that can be done is good to know. There's a lot of people that never heard about the wonderbag, I did put out a picture on facebook when I got it and a friend of mine asked about the hat. It took me a moment to figure that one out.