Last night, I made soup. Lots of vegetables, lentils, barley, pepper. I liked it. I ate as much as I could.
I made too much soup.
Even after a few hours, the soup was too hot to put in the refrigerator. I did not want to waste a lot of energy cooling down soup, and then it hit me. What did my mom used to do?
She put things like that out in the garage in the winter. No animals would get to it as long as the garage door was closed, and it was colder in there than anywhere else in the winter. (She still lives in northern Ohio.) I don’t have a garage, but I do have a second floor balcony and it was about freezing last night. So I put my soup out there, and in just a few hours it was cold and ready to be put in the refrigerator.
I don’t think I would recommend this to someone living in Florida or anywhere else where it might not get cold enough to keep food safe. But it works great on a cold night in Virginia.
I wonder how much energy I saved. One web site thinks it might only be $0.03, but that seems low to me. I think it might be a dime or even more. It was a lot of soup.
I know a dime does not seem like a lot. But a dime a day is $36.50 a year. Almost enough for two people to go to a movie if you stay away from the popcorn.
Great Blog I always have a good time reading it. It’d be great if someone knew about this site http://www.earthlab.com ? I have used their carbon calculator and it seems pretty legit? Has anyone else used it? They are partners with live earth and Al Gore so it must be pretty credible? If anyone else has done digging on this let me know. Oh and I got a score of 289 on their test…lower than the average in my state! Whoop whoop!