Jul 10, 2008

Extreme money-saving tip: Cook in your car

Last year, I saw a Serious Eats post about a woman who baked cookies on her dashboard. And today, Serious Eats posted about a man who cooked salmon en papillote in his car's engine. Apparently, there's even a book devoted to this cooking method: Manifold Destiny: The One! The Only! Guide to Cooking on Your Car Engine.

I have to admit, I'm tempted to try baking cookies in my car. The weather certainly gets hot enough here that I could do it. But I park in a garage almost all the time, so I probably won't go out of my way to do this.

On the other hand, if money was very, very tight, I would consider cooking in my car as a cost-saving measure.

Would you?

Image credit: BakingBites.com.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is bordering the line between frugal and cheap. I would never do this... I think it's more on the cheap side. Sorry!

Denise Mall said...

From my side, I saw "wow, this would be fun." Not cheap at all.

I could just see me and my kids when they were younger trying this out, while we took a walk or went to the forest preserve.

As a mom, I definitely would have added this to our "fun, let's try it list".

katy said...

I wouldn't want my car smelling like cookies. It would increase my appetite. I have asked my dh about making a solar oven but we really haven't looked into it.

Chief Family Officer said...

@anon - No apology necessary. I would only do this on a regular basis if I was really desperate to cut costs. But I love Dedicated's experimental perspective.

@Dedicated - I totally agree, this will make a fun experiment (though Marc may kill me for making the car smell of cookies)!

@Katy - Good point. Hm, I'll have to look into the solar oven thing. The little I know about it is what I picked up from watching of the defunct Ed Begley Jr. show on HGTV when it was on. :)

Kim Moldofsky said...

Interesting, but what about those toxic fumes that supposedly rise up from the dashboard when the car sits in the sun?

BTW, life insurance posts are still in the queue. I haven't forgotten :-)

Anonymous said...

I've seen things like this and must admit that I am quite fascinated by it. Having said that, I don't think I'm quite ready to try it out yet.

It's nothing abt being cheap or whatever, but just concerned about the hygiene of getting stuff cooked in a car. Maybe I'll change my mind after I've actually seen it up close.

Anonymous said...

If I was to the point where I resulted in using my car to cook, I certainly wouldn't be buying cookie dough with whatever money I had.