Saving ways with electricity

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 34013, 29 November 1975, Page 6

Saving ways with electricity

The energy crisis is apparently making women in New Zealand and in Britain much more conservation conscious. “Rising prices are bringing home the need to use electricity as economically as possible,” says Miss Joan Sadleir.

Miss Sadleir has been advising English women on how to get the most out of electricity at the least cost for the last 28 years. She has just retired as a housecraft adviser for the Southern Electricity Board, but she is maintaining her long association with the Salisbury Electrical Association for Women, which she founded.

While in Christchurch she is staying with Miss D. W. Hill-Holmes, president of the Electrical Association for Women in New Zealand. Conservation is now a major theme in the talks the local association has been giving to women’s groups.

The women have found much in common in the economy measures they advise. Miss Hill-Holmes says New Zealanders are just beginning to adopt many methods long advocated in Britain, where electricity is more expensive.

Much of Miss Sadleir’s advice is purely practical, and requires only Some reorganisation of household chores. She advises homemakers to wash the dishes once a day, instead of running off hot water several times.

The same principle applies to the washing. “Don’t put on a washing machine for just a few articles, wait until you have a full load,” she said yesterday. “This also applies to the electric cooker. It’s the initial heating up of the oven that takes the most power. You should fill it up with several dishes, not just one.”

The new hot-air-circulat-ing ovens — now available in New Zealand — enabled cooks to bake on several levels because the heat was even throughout the oven. But even with a conventional cooker she advises women, as does the local association, to plan meals using either the elements or the oven. Miss Salisbury finds root vegetables sliced, salted, and with a lit-e vegetable extract cook very well in the oven with meat if simmered in a casserole dish for about an hour. She suggests adding a baked pudding for dessert, and then only the green vegetables need cooking on top.

Both women agree that most cooks overcook greens. “I always tell women when I’m talking to a group not to boil vegetables like rags,” said Miss Hill-Holmes "We do tend to overcook things here. Green vegetables need only be cooked for about ten minutes in a little water.”

To save power, both strongly advise turning the heat down once a saucepan has come to the boil. They advocate using flat-bottomed pots, with a wide bottom to use all the heat, particularly with radiant elements. The main advantage of heavybottomed cookware is that it does not buckle. Miss Sadleir prefers to use pottery casseroles herself, because she finds they retain the heat very well. Iron casseroles are also very successful, she says.

Both women are frequently asked for advice on the most economical use of home freezers. They agree on the principle of cooking double quantities, and freezing the extra half, of baking several cake mixtures and freezing the extra two cakes.

Miss Hill-Holmes has been concerned that New Zealand families have been buying larger freezers than they need. It seems a husband would shop with his wife, and, moved to largess, decide she should have the biggest model. “Then to keep it full they would have to be buying much more meat than they really needed to at one time. We advise women to buy smaller freezers unless they have big families,” said Miss Hill-Holmes.

As more women join the workforce their housework routines are changing. Miss Sadleir notices a trend for workers to set aside a few hours each week for baking, rather than doing it several

times a week — which is a I power-saving routine. In Britain, Miss • Sadleir said, much emphasis is placed on insulating homes to cut down on power consumption for heating. There were building standards set for insulation of new homes, and a method of insulating older double-brick houses with liquid foam was gaining considerable acceptance as being relatively cheap and very effective. There are 160 branches of the E.A.W. in Britain (the association in Christchurch is the only one in New Zealand and was organised in 1960). The association was begun by Britain’s first woman engineer, Caroline Haslett, to further the proper use of electricity by women.