We had fun with our menu this week. Really we did. This week we combined our “Summer Electric Plan” with a Latin based Theme Week. We even got a great recipe submission from our friend in Spain, Natascha. She runs her own blog Natascha’s Palace give it a look.
The goal of the “Summer Electric Plan” is to focus on cooking methods that don’t heat up the interior of the house. This worked well with the “Latin Theme Week” too.
Hopefully we will start to see results from our “Summer Electric Plan.” We managed to get all the maintenance done on our A/C that we could. We are still waiting for the electric company to come our and fix their thermostat. Its a programmable one that also communicates wirelessly with the electric company so that they can send current electric rates to the thermostat. The thermostat responds to those rates by adjusting the temperature to avoid spending during the peak rate periods. Unfortunately, it has lost communications with the electric company and they have to replace it. However, I was able to reprogram it to permanently avoid running the A/C during normal peak rate periods.
Now on to the good stuff. Our “Summer Electric Plan” focuses on using No cooking, Grilling, Crock Pot, Quick Stove top, and Microwave cooked dishes.
Following our menu is sorted by these cooking methods:
Quick Stove Top dishes
Fish escabeche (Hot marinated fish)
Bistec Encebollado – Steak and Onions
Crock pot dishes
No cook dishes
Combination dishes
Gallo Pinto (The beans were cooked in a crock pot, the rice was cooked in a steamer, and then the were quickly stir fried together on the stove top.)
Jaques Kitchen 