Category: Money and Finance

Review on My Food Processor (Kenwood Multi Pro)

Under construction

One of my most used kitchen gadget! Though I must say some of the attachments are a waste of space. Stay tuned as I will try to describe all the attachments which apparently have 34 functions.

20120510-081041 PM.jpg

Reducing Our Carbon Footprint – GO SOLAR

We are doing our bit for the planet by using clean renewable energy!

After a good few weeks of pondering, calling around, making appointments, surveys, contract agreement, putting up scaffoldings, today is D-day that we finally have our solar panels installed and live…up and running! Hurray! Yes, solar panels don’t come cheap, but we got ours for FREE!…and yes, I did say FREE.

Now we can reduce our electricity bills, hopefully by at least 50%! We will be using more of our induction hob rather than gas to cook for a start >¥

Hubs went all out to get an energy monitor and has been obsessed with it. Switching everything on and off to see how much electricity is used and calculating how much we safe if we turn the appliances off…oh well I guess it is all for the better to reduce our carbon footprint!

After the installation, the house’s energy efficiency rating has bumped up from Band D to Band C with a potential of moving to Band B. This ia ace as a higher Band means less running cost. It was estimated by the surveyor that we could save at least £408 over 3 years. Other recommendations to save more money and make the house more efficient includes:

Addition of floor insulation
Replacing boiler with new condensing boiler
Use solar water heating

Why don’t you do your part to reduce your carbon footprint.

1. Go solar
2. Turn things off completely rather than leaving them on standby…get an energy monitor to encourage yourself
3. Reduce waste, recycle (Ethan is the recycle king, going round the house to recycle things and even go through the bin to telling us off for throwing things and not recycling them)

You may be amazed that you may be saving yourself some dosh by reducing your carbon footprint!

If you are in UK, look up the Energy Saving Trust.

20120428-061902 PM.jpg

On this gloomy day, we have enough energy to run the fridge, bread maker, washing machine, oil-filled heater, tv and charging our phones, not forgetting the Pad-of-I! GO SOLAR!

Saving Eletricity and Gas bills with Induction Hob

During my one month confinement period after giving birth to Ewan (this is a normal practice for Chinese cultures to protect the newborn baby and mother after birth), my mother was with us helping out and pampering me. Part of mummy’s pampering regimen includes making special soup and highly nutritious food which involved a lot of boiling, double boiling, simmering, slow cooking stews and steaming.

Hubs being the electrical engineer he is, started to think of a more efficient way, after all every little helps. It wasn’t long until he stumble upon and became a true follower of using induction hobs.

An induction hob has some serious advantages over gas and electric hobs.

 

So what is an induction hob and how does it work?

Induction hobs work by creating an electromagnetic field which doesn’t heat the hob itself but transfers the energy to your pan.
This means temperature increase on your cooking pan is instantaneous and cooking is far quicker.

On top of that an induction hob is an energy saver, making use of 84% of the energy produced compared with the 40% used by gas according to wiki.

The hob isn’t directly heated so it doesn’t get hot enough to burn and cools down very quickly the lack of a gas source means there’s no chance of a leak.

The last two safety features are very handy if you’ve got kids at home like us!

Save Money and Make Your Own Homemade Play Dough (cooked method)

All kids love play dough, mine is no exception. There is no cheaper way than making your own. These lovely homemade dough keeps Ethan occupied for hours while I make dinner or bake. They are made from ‘non-toxic’ food ingredients and preserved with salt. Just keep the dough in air tight containers and they can lasts for months. For budding artists, you can use them as modelling clays. My little artist would make little figurines, leave them to dry and harden, then paint the harden dough afters. They are loads of fun.

This recipe involves a little cooking. We prefer the cooked to the non cooked play dough as the cooked version has a better texture.  Have your little one make some with you and you can have limitless fun with your homemade play dough. As the play dough may smell like food, just make sure that your pets don’t gobble them up. Although they are not toxic it contains loads of salt, it will make your pets ill from salt imbalance. Having said that, Ethan had a bite of our homemade playdough, spat it out and asked for a glass of water, LOL, the little monkey!

Try making your own paly dough and save some money. Every penny counts and there is definately no lack of fun factor . Enjoy!

Ingredients

  • 2 cups of flour
  • 2 cups of water
  • 1 cup of salt
  • 2 tablespoon of vegetable oil
  • 1 table spoon of cream of tartar (this helps to make the dough more elastic, as cream of tartar changes the acidity of the dough)
  • Food colouring

Method

Mix all the dry ingredients in a pan. add one cup of cold water and make into a paste to ensure there are no lumps, slowly add the rest of the water then oil. Heat the mixture in low heat stirring constantly to prevent burning. The paste will thicken into a dough. Leave to cool and your play dough is ready. Remember to store in an airtight container or the play dough will harden.

You can add food colouring into the water before you cook the dough or like me, you can make the dough first, divide the dough into a few portions whilst it is warm and add a different colour to each portion of dough. If you are adding the food colouring after the dough is cook, you will need to knead the colour into the dough.

With this latter method, you only have to make/cook one batch of dough whereas the former method you will only get one colour for each cooked batch.

Be careful, concentrated food colouring may stain.

p/s for the TangZhong addicts, this homemade play dough shares similar elastic properties as our beloved water roux started for bread.