If you're cooking rice (not converted, the old fashioned kind) you can heat the liquid to boiling, add the rice, boil for 5 minutes, put a lid on it, and turn off the stove. It will cook by itself.
Also, try making meals where you use one oven tempurature/time for everything. One of my favorite cooking booklets is by the Mohawk Power people and has menus like this. I also believe the New Better Homes & Gardens Cookbooks had some of these too.
If you're steaming vegetables in a double boiler, why not boil an egg in the water at the same time? Or, if you're not interested in doing that, use the hot water for tea, washing dishes, cleaning a counter, whatever.
If you're baking bread, throw a potato or two in on the bottom rack, you'll get baked potatoes for potato salad or stuffed skins, or.... btw, that's the only time I oven bake potatoes, mostly I scrub 'em, take the eyes/faults off and nuke 'em in the microwave. I do this for baked potatoes and mashed.
We didn't have a hot water heater for a while, and I learned how to wash/rinse dishes with the least amount of hot water. I still use this when we lose power, once or twice a year here in rural NH.
Fill a stew pot with water, set it on a med high burner to heat. While it's heating, rinse in cold water all the food off the dishes. Discard that water, then wash all the dishes with cold water by using a soapy sponge and adding water as needed. Stack the soapy dishes on the counters (can be dirty, but not gross). By now the water should have boiled.
Put the hot water into a clean plastic dish pan. Using tongs, your fingers, etc. dip the dishes into the hot water, pull them out and put them on the dish drainer. Repeat until all the dishes are done. If you need to do a second batch of dishes, use the soapy, tepid water to wash the new batch of dishes with the first time. The soapy water on your counters can be used to clean up your counters, no extra hot water or soap is usually necessary. If i know I'm only doing one dish drainer load, I'll dip the dishes directly in the stew pot, then pour the soapy water into the dish pan for whatever other cleaning I need to do.
Judi
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