And as a tree hugger I hereby give some "gas" on the issue...
Saving Vehicle Fuel
1. Drive only if you must. Walk or Cycle if you have to go to the neighbourhood store. If you need to cover many stores in a single location, park the car and walk to all of them. It is good for health too!
2. Drive fuel efficient cars within the city
3. Car pool if you can. Saves money too and ensures lesser cars on the road. If you are a corporate- try to provide office transport
4. Limit visits to the petrol bunk- fill when you are nearly empty and do a full tank. You save time and the extra distance you need to travel wherever applicable. Ok I correct this line- Thanks Sue for pointing out - it's better to not go below half tank is what most of them say - check out this discussion
5. Plan your route in advance
6. Drive at constant speed, avoid sudden brakes, remove the foot off the clutch, drive in the gear appropriate for your speed - 40 is the suggested speed for maximising fuel efficiency
7. Switch off at signals if you have to stop for more than 30 seconds. and start only when the 3rd/ 4th car ahead of you start moving.
8. Keep the tyres pumped up. Infact there are many other technical points to watch out for - you can find them here in a nice presentation format.
9. The car is not your additional wardrobe space- do not overload your vehicle with junk.
10 Service the car
Saving Cooking Gas
1. Cover cook as much as possible.
2. Pressure Cooking is faster and thereby saves both time and fuel- After one whistle, cook on lowest flame.
3. Small burners are for small vessels- Don't plonk them on the large burners.
4. Reduce the flame while stirring, adding spices etc or when boling starts. Apart from saving fuel and preventing burning of the dish, it also prevents your hands from feeling the heat of the flames
5. Use shallow, wide, lighter pans and kadahis made of metal wherever possible- they heat up faster, cover the entire flame on which they sit and cook faster- metal being cood conductor of heat gets hot faster than traditional terracotta pots
6. Adjust the size of your vessel depending upon the quantity of the food you are cooking.
7. Soaking lentils/rice etc before cooking ensures faster cooking.
8. Clean burners are more fuel efficient
9. Assemble all raw materials before lighting the gas
10. Cooking a large portion that is good enough for 2 meals also saves fuel, time and effort
11. Avoid adding too much water- most veggies give out their own water while cooking. especially for non veggie stuff I don't add water at all as the meat lets out water that is sufficient for cooking either in a pressure cooker or in a kadahi.
12. Clean vessels- minus the coating also save fuel
13. Little things like planning the entire family's meal to be done at a single time saves fuel- avoids multiple reheating / gas lighting
14. Allow frozen food to reach room temperature before cooking. Infact if I have to reheat food I leave it outside while I am cooking other stuff so that the temperature comes down and when we are ready to eat, then only I heat the food
15. Cook with separators or do sametime cooking- boiling eggs & potato together for egg curry, or Chicken and rice cooked together for chicken fried rice, (make sure you account for the chicken stock that will be released while cooking), the masala base cooked together for 2 different preparations and then divided at a later stage.
16. Keep (ginger garlic) pastes, ground masala handy so you are not slicing/ pounding them at the time of cooking
17. I spend some time every day in deciding the exact sequence of cooking I am going to do- popcorn before daal in the same cooker, using the same hot non stick tawa sequentially for dosa, parathas, bread toasting, omelette - the maid is happier too!
3 comments:
Actually, Itchy, it's more eco-friendly to keep your tank topped up. I think the reason for this is that petrol evaporates faster the more air there is in the tank, so running on emptier tanks means you lose a lot more petrol through evaporation.
Keeping your vehicle junk-free (and light!) and travelling at 40-50 kmph are smart moves too.
LOL at the happy maid!
Geez, that's a good one. Thanks for sharing this.
They are looking so tiny & round in the 2nd pic and check out the delighted faces!
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