What you see above, my friends, is a game changer, or can be, when it comes to energy consumption with cooking. What you are peering at is a thermal cooker!
I've been quasi obsessed with thermal cooking since I read about the hay box cooking of WWII in my British rationing cookbooks.
The concept is simple and goes back to...well probably about the time men walked upright and discovered fire really. You take an object that retains heat, like a slab of rock, heat it up to really hot, put it in a thermally insulated environment (like in a pit or something), put your food on top and then put more insulation on top and let the heat do it's thermal voodoo. This is just more modern and on a smaller scale than, say, a luau pit.
You heat the slab of stone with this model (the big disc there), put it in the bottom of the cooker (which is, essentially a GIANT thermos) after heating the rock on a burner for a half an hour. You heat your food at the same time in the inner pot to brown your meat and such. Once you put the rock into the cooker, put your inner pan on top of the heated rock, slap on the lid and walk away. The rock and cooker will continue to cook your food for up to eight hours and will heat it for even longer. So you can put this baby on the counter in the morning with a little prep work and just walk away and have dinner done at suppertime. Kind of like a crock pot, but no electric involved for most of the day.
I've been wanting one of these to take on our camper for a LONG time as you can heat the rock on a campfire or you can heat it on your camper stove, but preserve a bunch of propane by heating the rock and forgetting about it.
I'm also looking forward to trying it out at home just because really as I have seen some cool recipes in my rationing cookbooks that call for hay boxes and stuff and I'm intrigued to say the least :).
These cookers normally retail for 70.00 to 80.00 on the low end of the cost spectrum and those are pretty small cookers. This one is actually pretty big and is from, it looks like to me, the 70's. But it's BRAND SPANKING NEW in condition. It still had all the paperwork in it, the original cardboard insert is on the bottom of the cooker to stop the stone from scratching up the bottom of the cooker and everything. Retail back then for this thing? 89.95 by the little insert card that came with the cooker.
Final price I paid? 25.00.
I never expected to ever run into one of these at the thrift stores. I'd had one in my Amazon cart for at least two years to buy eventually, but 70.00 on the cheap was just out of my price range. 25.00? I could swing that.
So, yeah, it was an awesome day on the thrift store shopping front this week. How did you do?
That really is a cool find, Erika. Congrats!
ReplyDeleteCongratulations, Erika, on your post today at One Hundred Dollars A Month! I was thrilled to see it there, and I am sure that your expertise and creativity will be appreciated by regular readers there!
ReplyDeletePauline
*Laugh* thanks for the head's up. I haven't checked back on the site in a while and am actually amazed I made the cut and got published :).
DeleteWhat a wonderful find! I went to Goodwill today and bought a stack of blank cards (99 cents), three dresses for my youngest ($2.29 each), two brand new paper doll books (99 cents each) and my favorite find was an old english school book from 1913. It was $1.99 I will probably resell it after I read it. A few years ago I was able to resell a copy of The Jungle Book.
ReplyDeleteAmber in Kentucky
Oh wow! I love those old text books and things when you can find them. They seem like they just had so much more knowledge in them then modern text books, although really that makes sense as those text books were meant to last a LONG time and were for various grades I'm sure. Cool find :).
DeleteSo, I was just pretty excited when I found a stainless steel lid to replace the one I had whose handle broke, but you beat me by a long shot. :) But seriously, I was so happy to find a new lid for $1.99, since I couldn't find another handle for the other one and certainly didn't want to have to buy a whole new pot with a lid. I also bought some napkins I like for $1.50. I had the day off Monday and got to hit a couple of thrift stores for the first time in a very long time.
ReplyDeleteWow! I can't believe you found a lid! I have looked at the thrift stores for various lids for YEARS and the closest I've come to finding a lid was finding a mis-matched lid that worked on a piece of my old Tupperware. I have never had any luck finding a replacement stainless steel lid or a glass lid, so GREAT find there!
DeleteThere is a site called mortgagefreeinthree.com and she makes a thermal pot. If you wanted another one I think you can buy her instructions, don't know how much she charges though. Cheryl
ReplyDeleteThere are online tutorials for thermal cooking bags/Wonder Bags. I looked into making one a couple of times, but just hadn't gotten around to it.
DeleteHere's the PDF I found that walks you through the tutorial...
http://www.iwillprepare.com/files/pdf/handout-wonder_box_instructions.pdf
I liked the idea of having the thermal cooker more just because it's smaller and you can store it like a crock pot, but hey the online tutorial is free, so it's always nice to have a link up to those interested :).
Good find! That seems so practical to have!!
ReplyDeleteAre things going well with your huband doing the bills? I'm hoping its still been less stress on you!!
Pppft. Um, no, it hasn't been going at all *laugh*. My husband got so paranoid about not paying the bills on time and things that he was really not enthusiastic about it at all and asked me to keep doing what I was doing. We are, however, sitting down every week and going over the books in detail and he seems a lot more on board with making sure we're saving money because he knows what bills need to be paid when. I wrote out said bills and when they are do and put the tally up on how much we saved in a given week, which is also helping to keep both of us on task because when he asks me I have it all written down now to show him if he wants.
DeleteI wasn't thrilled about not getting a financial management vacation, but at least this way I'm not feeling like I'm doing it all alone, which has helped my stress levels a lot :).