Environmentally Conscious Living

Recently I tried a few new things for the sake of environmental protection, which I’d like to write down and share. The first is buying an “induction stove”, that is a cooking device that uses “electromagnetic” energy rather than traditional electricity or gas energy, a pretty new technology.

It is said that induction stoves save much energy than electric one. It looks like a glass-top electric stove; the cheapest one costs less than $50 to buy, so I decided to give it a try.

The shipment was quick, I received it within days. Open the package, I couldn’t find where the manufacturer locates – the name of the brand Zenchef somewhat sounds Chinese though. I really hope it works.

The manual says it works for stainless steel and iron cookware, nothing else. If you put on wrong cookware, the device would not heat up but beeps. All right, I tried 6 of my pots and pans, only two works. Good enough.

Does it work exactly like an electric range? Not exactly. I cooked a pot of rice using different power levels, which is pretty similar to electric ones, although I am not sure how to use different temperature settings.

But when I tried to sauté some vegetables with a soup pot (my frying pan is neither iron nor steel), the vegetables quickly began to smoke and started to burn! I am not sure if it’s because I added salt into oil before put in vegetables, or the pot just heated up too quickly. I obviously need to learn how to use it to bake.

Another thing I tried was to taste plant-based meat, because the animal agriculture pollutes much, especially raising cattle, I want to eat less meat, especially beef. The other day I noticed those expensive plant-based artificial meat products were on sale, a 12 oz package of plant-based hot dog was $3, still expensive, but I am curious.

The brand I bought was “Smart Dogs”. The package instructs me to heat up with hot water -- must be a ready-to-eat product, so I ate it with a bread. The first bite tasted like the real thing, but the next bite was not quite.

Maybe its quality is uneven. After ate a few, I guess 70% of the Smart Dogs taste like real meat hot-dogs enough. I will wait until the price for plant-based meats come down to try more.

Yesterday it suddenly occurred to me, that I can give up cheese and yogurt all together. For the first 30 years of my life, I never ate these things in China. It was after I came to North America that I learnt to enjoy them. But I certainly don’t need to assume my fridge has to have these products constantly available! Just my bread recipe says “butter”, doesn’t necessarily mean I cannot use other type of oils!