Kitchen tips - save energy, save money, save the planet

No recipe this week as I'm taking mine and Music Mick's beautiful daughter to lunch for her birthday.

So instead - a few tips on saving energy in the kithen:

1. When making a cup of tea or coffee, fill the cup or mug and tip into the kettle rather than free filling the kettle and boiling mroe than you need. The potential energy saved in one week could power your telly for a whole day.

2. Fill the cooking pan with boiled water from the kettle rather than bringing a cold pan of water to the boil on the stove top.

3. Bring the water just over the level of the food to be cooked - 1cm for veg, 2.5cms for pasta - you simply don't need to roll your veg or pasti around on a gallon of boiling water.

4. Turn the heat off under the pan about 5 minutes before end of cooking (particularly when cooking on electric stoves) as the residual heat will finish off the cooking. Thats 30hrs of heat saved every year - yes! 30 HOURS.

5. Cook a second veg over the pan you're currently using - use a steaner of a colander - so peas over pasta for example.

6. Don't put hot food direct into the fridge. This causes the fridge to overwork using loads of energy. Instead, leave the food to cool down to room temperture first.

7. Eat a cold meal (cheese salad) instead of cooking once a week.

8. Make sure the washing machine is full before setting it off - or use the half load button if you have one.

9. Wash using a cold setting - up to 95% of the energy used in a washing machine goes in to heating the water!

10. When your dishwasher

hits the drying cycle - turn it off and open the door to let the dishes air dry. This saves 50% of the cycles energy.

11. And a great tip from my friend, Pip. Hang whatever washing you can on hangers to dry - you'll hardly ever have to iron again!

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