When we moved into our home, the outlet for the stove had not been wired because it needed to be on it's own breaker and the air conditioning took up the last two breakers so we needed to put in a new sub-panel for our breaker box etc. etc. etc. Ben said it would be a quick fix (and it did end up being quick, but pricey) yet it ended up taking three weeks for Ben to get to fixing it. Holidays plus sickness plus finishing with the apartments plus going back to work plus getting a functional bathroom
with bathing facilities put a halt on hooking the stove up. We managed to get by with our electric skillet, slow cooker, and rice cooker for most of our meals. Let me share some of our favorite ways to use them.
The Rice Cooker
We used this to cook rice for any meals that needed rice. I was also just thinking that we probably could have used it to steam potatoes (for mashed potatoes) and it would have worked grandly. Our rice cooker is also a steamer, so we steamed vegetables occasionally, but we usually get them in microwaveable bags.
The Slow Cooker
I cooked our turkey for Christmas dinner in the slow cooker. It was awesome (did you read Dad's review of it?) and moist and had great flavor. We also did bbq chicken, baked potatoes, turkey carcass soup (Ben's concoction). I tried out
this yummy recipe from Emily's food blog. We also successfully baked pizza in it for what is becoming our traditional pizza night. We also had a yummy chicken hash brown meal when the elders came one night.
The Electric Skillet
I have been hesitant about our electric skillet that we got from Grandma when we got married, but now I love it. We used it for just about anything you would cook on a griddle or in a pan on the stove. We cooked eggs and sausages, pancakes, French toast for breakfasts. We made a myriad of skillet meals. I'm glad we had it because it allowed us to still have regular stove top meals.
Now we did have several nights where we ate out or had a pizza delivered, but for the most part had regular home cooked meals for the three weeks we were sans stove. If for some reason we end up without a stove again, I am ready it.
