In an effort to reduce my bills especially since my oven is always on I have had to change our menus and dishes. I recently purchased a rice cooker which takes ten min to make amazing rice, bulgar wheat, oatmeal etc.
My crockpot makes awesome soups, stews, and other dishes. My George Foreman grills my meats in winter and my little toaster oven makes little muffins for my kids or brownies. I steam my veggies in the microwave too.
Now lets see what my bills come to this month. Take that power company!

Awesome ideas..I too have a rice cooker...love it..super quick and much faster and tastier than stove top which I screw up sometimes..and a slow cooker..now that I need to use more often..great ideas..hope you save $$$..

Those are great suggestions!

I had never really thought about this until I saw An Inconvenient Truth. The next day, I purchased a Cuisinart countertop convection oven. It uses a fraction of the electricity of the big oven and cooks everything much faster. I never used my oven again after that unless I was cooking food for someone else and needed to bake it in a large pan. I especially love roasted vegetables in the convection oven. They are always perfect.

If I need to cook something in boiling water, I bring the water to a boil in the electric kettle and pour it into the saucepan, then continue to cook on the stove. it uses less electricity to get it started this way. I use an Adagio electric kettle. It's the fastest I've tried, and it has settings on it to adjust for different types of tea.

You can also turn the heat off for a lot of foods, and set them aside with the lid on to finish cooking.

Is a rice cooker really worth it? I've often thought about getting one because I love fluffy rice. Is there a difference in how the end results come out in a rice cooker vs. stove stop? Thanks.

I got a stainless steel rice cooker and I love it. It is pretty convenient although I did fine without one for a while.

I also have a countertop toaster oven that I cook a ton of stuff in. If I use my oven, I am cooking a bunch of stuff (roasting veggies, squash, etc, multiple pans). I've probably used my oven 3 times in the past year. I never use it in summer.