Finding and Using Manual Power or Low Energy Solutions

“When our eyes see our hands doing the work of our hearts, the circle of Creation is completed inside us, the doors of our souls fly open, and love steps forth to heal everything in sight.” - Michael Bridge

Part of our personal quest for sustainability as a family has included finding ways to do the things we do with less energy. Part of this includes making some of our own food from whole foods instead of buying processed equivalents. Yet this means we have to use tools in the kitchen that are more readily available in energy-sucking versions like food processors, microwaves, mixers, etc. Where we don't feel we can get away from using a tool entirely, we've tried to slowly replace these tools with manual powered or low energy solutions.

Manual powered and low energy alternatives we are using in our kitchen.

We like coffee. We decided while we don't drink a lot of it, we weren't prepared to entirely give it up... yet. We also prefer grinding our own beans. We had an electric grinder that we bought at a department store but it recently stopped working. This time around we decided we would go to the local kitchen goods store downtown and buy the hand-cranked coffee mill you see pictured above. It works great, and we are now using no electricity to grind our own coffee. We still haven't settled on a low energy solution for making the coffee, but we're considering a French press when our auto-drip coffee maker stops working. In the meantime we finally found and bought a replacement Hot Shots (also pictured above) to heat one or two cups of water at a time for tea, broth, hot cereals, or for whatever else we might need small amounts of boiling water. Using the Hot Shot is a lot more energy efficient than heating it in the microwave or heating a kettle of water on the stove.

We had an electric food processor that a relative gave us, but we rarely used it. We knew we wanted to use a food processor more, but we also couldn't justify using the electricity. We found our hand-crank food processor pictured above and have been using a food processor more (for example to make our own hummus as you can see in the photo) but not using any electricity to do so. We've had the hand-crank mixer the longest. It was a gift from a college friend. We would like to find one that is a little more user-friendly (the handle on this one slips a lot) but for now this one has served us well enough. We also were given a three-cups measuring cup set that included lids for grating cheese or vegetables and for hand-juicing fruits, which allowed us to also give away our electric juicer.

I really would like to find ways to do things like make toast or bake or roast in more energy efficient ways, but we haven't yet found or settled on anything. We have south-facing windows in our apartment, so there must be a way for us as residents in an apartment complex to use solar options that are non-permanent -- meaning we could put them in the window while in use and tuck them away when we're done.

Do you have any suggestions for manual powered or low energy solutions for kitchen or household items? What has or hasn't worked for you? Are there any of these devices that you share with neighbors so only one person has to own but many can benefit from its use?

P.S. I have been biking more and more as a means of transportation. I'm up to biking at least twice a week, some weeks more, and my average trip to run errands or keep appointments is between 4 and 6 miles. I've found I'm more keen to line up my errands and appointments to make efficient use of my time and get more done with each commute.