Making a quick inexpensive meal, not as easy as it sounds
Making a meal can be a lot of work. It can also be very expensive. Not only are the costs of ingredients going up but there is also the cost of the equipment needed to cook the food. Then there is the cost of the energy required to cook the food. Then there is the time and effort required to prep the ingredients! Indeed one of my absolute least favorite jobs as a father is preparing food for the kids.
However, saying NO to cooking means eating out. Eating out means: (1) Expensive food. (2) Time to get to the restaurant and (3) Typically less healthy food.
Now I'm on vacation in the Philippines. I'm staying with my family and their food choices are ahem not stuff that is my favorite. In addition to that they have a habit of cooking all their food in the morning and leaving it out all day. That seems to work for them but I've been here often enough to know that if I eat that food I'll spend the rest of my vacation in the washroom.
For a long time I've wondered....How can I spend little money and still end up with something easy to prepare, inexpensive, tasty, nutritious, and requires little cleanup, little electricity plus I could do it in a hotel room. Haha Impossible right?
Well, not exactly.
Enter the electric lunchbox
Now this little beauty is actually very inexpensive. Indeed I just ordered one from Lazada for a fairly modest amount of money.
So this arrived in 2 days from when I placed the order delivered Cash On Delivery right to my door in the bario (rural area) of Tuguegarao. Awesome!
More importantly it lets me make nutritious food with virtually no preparation and in a manner that is inexpensive and won't leave me running to the washroom.
Typically I would make rice, meat, and vegetables. However, as there is no grocery store where I am I had to make due with what I could buy in a Sari Sari store (small store with a bit of everything).
My ingredients
- 100g of Rice (P 5)
- 2 eggs (P10each)
- Lucky Me noodles (P12)
Plus a little soya sauce....but not enough for me to both mentioning. I also got some bottled drinking water but again, not going to count that in the cost.
As for preparation? It is dead simple:
Step One -- Add water to the cooker
Now I added about 160ml water. I could probably use less but if I add too little it may not fully cook. Add too much and it just takes longer. So, I used a bit extra.
Mix the noodles, spice and water in the first container.
Just kidding. You actually have to remove the ingredients from the package first. I know it sounds stupid but in Pharmacy I've had people use medication without removing it from the wrapper and .... well, it doesn't work well
Now I can guarantee that pretty much anyone can do those steps so far! And the next step is even easier.
Add eggs to bowl
Okay that is a pretty easy step. Hard to screw that up.
Mix rice and water.
Now many people wash the rice. I do to. However, I've also had my son just mix the rice and water and it still turns out okay. Getting the right mix of rice to water is a little challenging. I've found that ONE part of water and ONE and a HALF parts of water works well for me but a little trial and error may be necessary. In simple steps
First Add rice
Then Add water
If it looks like this then congratulations you did it right.
The cooking process
Now the cooking process is very simple. Put all the pieces together and hit start.
Noodles on the bottom
Eggs on top of the noodes
Place the divider
Place the rice
I added a bit of soy sauce for flavour.
Attach the lid...then press the button
This process doesn't exactly need a genius. Even teenage sons can do this much. Now usually I would replace the noodles with a mix of vegetables. However (1) I didn't have any vegetables and (2) I didn't have a cutting board. Still, if I did that would make a better meal. Same if I was to use meat instead of the eggs....but use what I had available.
The cooking process
As for the cooking process. It couldn't be easier. Leave it until 30 minutes or when the light goes out. At that point open things up and eat.
I opened up the lid to take a peek and
Pull the pieces apart and...
The food is ready to eat. Personally I just ate it from the metal container. It even has lids so you could throw a lid on and take it to work or school as a cooked lunch. The device even has handles so you could just carry it along with you (with the lids on inside).
Easy food AND uses very little electricity
Now the real beauty of this device is that it only uses 200W of power for about 30min to cook food. That means it uses about 0.1Kwh to cook the food. That's less than my laptop uses. That's an amount which even a small power box can put out and solar panels an easily provide. A cheap cooking device, a small power box and a couple solar panels and cook anywhere at anytime (almost). Cooking with zero environmental impact, how cool is that.
Or for those people stressing over the cost of fuel to cook with. The cost to cook this meal is about P 1.18 in the Philippines. It would be about 2 Naira in Nigeria. Of about 1.2 cents in Canada. Virtually nothing to make a meal
With less than 5 minutes of prep. With only 30-40minutes of cooking time. Using very little water.
In no way is it perfect
I'm not saying this is a perfect solution by any stretch. However, if you are willing to look for simple cooking strategies that are inexpensive they DO exist!
While it may not be the most nutritious meal I look at it this way. The ingredient cost PLUS the electricity cost was P39. That is for a meal with about 800 calories or slightly less than a days worth of food.
When I went out to lunch at Jollibee today I ordered two Yum burgers. Each burger was P40.
Or about the same amount of money as this ice cream cone that I purchased today.
I can guarantee you that the meal I prepared was far more filling than either a single Yum burger or a small ice cream cone.
Now I also heard that @sej has a similar device. I'm quite certain she will do a better job cooking with it as I just did a quick "Can I make something edible" post. I wonder what she will come up with .....
And as always, I love comments, feel free to let me know your thoughts.