How we dealt with no cooker
and what we should have done
We had our boiler last week and we switched to electric (I would explain how they work but it seems to be magic, or some kind of science that is beyond what they taught when I was at school). And part of this meant also switching to electric for everything else so that we can be gas free (mostly for the environment). So the cooker has not been usable since last Thursday. And the new one was supposed to come yesterday, but I realised (or was firmly told by Chris) that it would not actually be safe for us to disconnect it ourselves, even with the gas having been capped at the front of the house. The internet said all kinds of things could go wrong, most of which could result in a gas explosion that could kill us and all our close neighbours. So, I think he was probably right to stop me. So now the new cooker is coming tomorrow (Thursday) and will be properly installed by an actual qualified gas engineer and electrician. So no explosions or electric shocks.
And then, in fact, the day before the boiler was to be installed, the bloomin dishwasher decided to have a fatal error message too. We are yet to pull that out and see if we can sort it ourselves. Because we’ll have to get it out to move the washing machine to be able to get the old cooker out and the new cooker in. So we will do that today/tomorrow morning.
But this means we have been without a cooker and without a dishwasher for a week. I can safely say that the dishwasher is the one I missed the least. I have actually loved doing little bits of washing dishes through the day. I find it really soothing. I was reminded that we were without a dishwasher for a year or so after my father died (in 2007) and that I absolutely loved washing up and used it as my alone time to think about and process losing him. So, I wouldn’t honestly mind not having a dishwasher (but we will still probably replace it if it is broken. But we definitely need a cooker! And hopefully nothing more will go wrong and it will be here and working by tomorrow evening.
How did we deal with this? With a combination of eating out, takeaways, and microwave ready meals. I did buy some healthyish vegan ready meals, but no-one else wanted to eat them, and the one I ate wasn’t all that tasty. It was definitely not the healthiest of weeks! And also not very plant-based for me, either. The healthiest meals I managed was jacket potato (air fried - works very well) and salad and soup (fresh carton from the Co-op) with a roll. Everything else was pretty bad (though probably nowhere near as bad as I have eaten in the past, so that’s something, I guess).
Here’s what I would do if I was planning it better, and also had more time…
Cook a couple of batch meals in advance and freeze them in small portions, so they can be microwaved. I would have done shepherd’s pie (my vegan version, which has lots of mushrooms, lentils and vegetables in and a mix of sweet potato and ordinary potato on the top) and maybe a lasagne or pasta bake of some kind.
Make sure there are plenty of salad ingredients and also make some tubs of hummus, guacamole and a herby pesto of some kind - and bread, wraps and pittas. We literally lived off that for weeks during the summer, so doing it for a week at the tail end of the summer should not have been an issue.
Actually prepared proper meals every day, or close to every day, instead letting everyone just forage for themselves and fill themselves with junk food. (That’s actually probably a lesson to learn in general for when we’re crazy busy with work, though. It still makes sense to stop for long enough to make something healthy. Many healthy things don’t take much longer than sticking a ready meal in the microwave.)
Have you had to be without a cooker for a while? Do you have a sensible and healthy strategy or do you just fall back on ready meals, takeaways and eating out? (I recognise that we are incredibly privileged to be able to afford the latter, of course, and even to be able to afford a cooker in the first place and especially the new one that we’re getting, which is probably the fanciest cooker I’ll have ever had in my life.)
Next week is illustrated recipe week for paid subscribers. I am not sure yet which one you’ll get, but I am leaning towards something a bit more autumnal, so it might be a soup or the shepherd’s pie recipe I mentioned above, perhaps. I am so looking forward to proper soup weather!
Oh yes, camping gas stove. Chris has a one-ring one we could have used. And I remember borrowing Emma's two-ring one years ago when we were without kitchen for a month or so.
To be fair to myself, I think I would have done better of I had known it was going to be a full week. I was expecting it to be a bit more than a weekend which felt like it wouldn't need a proper plan.
Yes, washing up is very grounding. I think if I had a better work-life balance I would happily forego a dishwasher, but it's a lot easier to deal with a huge build-up of stuff to wash with a dishwasher.
I have never had a dishwasher in my life hahah! And I adore washing dishes, it’s literally the only household chore I don’t revile. Our new place will come with a dishwasher so I will see if it converts me.
During the sanctions/ bombing in Serbia we went very long times without electricity, but it wasn’t exactly ‘no cooker’ because it would come back on for a couple of hours so you just had to be ready to, like, ‘ready - set - cook!!’ whenever it came on. We definitely weren’t focusing on eating healthy hahah. But I think your suggestions are brilliant - prepped and frozen things, wraps and salads.
Last year here in Mtl we had a crazy ice storm that took out the power for 4 whole days!! It was insane. It also broke half the trees in the city. I tried to make a tiny bread warmer with sticks, foil and candles but it really didn’t work at all, fun though the idea was. We survived squarely on takeout.