LIVING OFF GRID

This blog is about our travels in our solar powered "Airstream" and living off grid, in our passive solar home, near Bancroft, Ontario, Canada.

If you have any questions send us a comment; we love to hear from our readers.
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Monday 17 February 2014

CHICKEN IN THE OVEN

Although we are off grid and relying on solar power for our electrical energy we prefer to use our solar energy when cooking rather than the propane stove. 

Propane is currently at $1.29/litre, oil is $1.18 and electricity is even more costly. A friend down the road who's entire house, cooking, hot water and heating is all electric had a bill over $1,000.00 last month. Energy cost are through the roof this winter so we are frugal with our propane use.

When we decided to roast one of our chickens that Paul helped us pluck and clean last summer we discovered it wouldn't fit our counter-top oven.





Now this is the very efficient electric oven we use frequently. It bakes, does our toast, cooks our sweet potato fries, and anything else you would usually put in your large stove oven.

Unfortunately our chicken was just a little large for our small electric oven so Mary turned on our propane stove to warm it to 350*F before cooking the chicken.

Then it dawned on me, why not cut the chicken into pieces and make it fit the smaller oven.

Turn off the propane, turn on the electric and two hours later out came ...............



chicken, golden brown and delicious.

When we first started living off grid we had sold many of our small electric kitchen appliances thinking we wouldn't have sufficient energy to use then. Not the case. If you visited us you wouldn't know we are off the electric grid. 

Everything you use electrically we do too. We do watch the weather for long stretches of cloudy days and adjust our electric consumption. Laundry is done when days are sunny but otherwise our use is fairly routine. We are considering installing an electric water heater this summer as those months produce an abundance of energy we seldom use.

We are quite happy to be off grid and still living comfortably.

If you have any questions just leave us a comment and I'll get back to you asap.

Safe travels everyone.

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