Remoska

I spent Christmas of 1996 in Prague with Kirsten, my girlfriend at the time - we'd rented a small flat through the travel agents. It was lovely actually, complete with strolls around the place in the snow and drinking foul tasting hot red wine from street sellers. Anyway, although technically self catering, there was no oven for our nut roast for the christmas meal - we mentioned this to our local contact, and they produced a strange electric saucepan gadget, we were sceptical but it did the job.

Last night after a very late journey home from the boat (would have been earlier, but I got waylaid half way down the moorings by beer), left outside a house with a note saying 'please take me' was, amongst other things, a strange electric saucepan gadget, which is now in my kitchen.

Turns out it's almost certainly the same model from the same factory, the Remoska; Lakeland Plastics import them from the Czech Republic. It's 470W, with no controls other than an on and off switch, but it gets rave reviews (from those who find it useful, obviously my neighbours didn't, unless they're doing the trendy 'decluttering' lark...).

I'm looking forward to having a play - I hardly ever bake stuff, I feel very aware of how much energy the oven uses, and more generally is always seems crazy for any meal, especially for one, to have two or three large heat sources running at once; trouble is I like a lot of texture in food, and a one pot stew rarely manages that. Cooking everything in a small oven may well be a more efficient way of doing things; we'll see. Interestingly it's energy efficiency is mentioned, amongst other places, in this blog post - I must have a read through the rest of the blog, recording a year's worth of ecnomising, too.