Recently I read an article (can’t find it now) that said when electricity was being introduced into households, there were two types of electrical appliances that were held out as incentives to use electricity: refrigerators, and toasters.

A refrigerator provides something you can’t do otherwise. You can’t really keep food cold (at all, in the summer, or efficiently, in the winter) without refrigeration. And you need your food to be safe.

A toaster, on the other hand, isn’t actually necessary. Want browned bread? Put it face down on a hot griddle and flip it when it’s brown, or put it in your broiler briefly, or you could even put bread over a fire on a stick. Toasted bread is also not necessary, as anyone whose toaster breaks (and they break a lot) already knows.

The reason I’m thinking about this was that someone I follow on Mastodon was scornful of electric stoves, because they draw so much power. “All that just to make cookies?” he said.

Make cookies. That’s what he thinks stoves are for. That’s when I realized there are some things that have really changed since I was a kid. My mother, on her old electric stove, made cookies, certainly, but also casseroles. They were terrible casseroles, mind you; tuna in white sauce with noodles, for instance, because canned meat was cheap. Corned beef hash with eggs cracked on top, again because canned meat was cheap. But the house smelled amazing and we ate it all, because we didn’t know any better. She broiled meat in the broiler, too, usually cheaper grades, maybe once a week. She used that oven a lot, and she didn’t even like cooking. Frozen fish sticks and Swanson TV dinners didn’t even come out until after I was born, but they required an oven, too.

I don’t think I have used the oven more than once, if at all. Hell, I rarely use the cooktop. Most of my cooked meals are heated up in my microwave. That’s because I live alone, and most recipes are designed for at least four people. Also, I don’t really like cooking any more than my mother did. But once a week, I do make a meal for the family, and I do it on my power-sucking induction cooktop.

Yeah, I have a fancy electric stove. I put a dedicated line for that stove. Yes, it sucks power. It’s worth it, because it’s not going to kill me.

Gas stoves are always leaking a little gas, which is not good for humans. Gas stoves, more importantly, produce fire, and I am old and inattentive, and can set myself on fire easily. My mother’s electric stove could set you on fire, too, though more slowly. My stove, on the other hand, doesn’t even get hot. I can put my hand palm down on the “burner” soon after removing the pot; it’s only warm because the pot itself got hot. That stove is safe.

But he’s not wrong, it’s also wasteful. Except of course, that as we replace fossil fuel sources of electrical power with renewable ones, electricity is still going to be around. And until we provide inexpensive neighborhood refectories where everyone can eat well, and prevent people from buying their own raw materials, people are going to cook.

(There’s a reason why one of the biggest sections of my local Barnes & Noble is filled with cookbooks.)

The stove is probably the oldest appliance. The original appliance, from which all others were engendered. A simple fire pit, with rocks around it, allowed human beings to cook their food and make it both more palatable and more digestible, plus it had the extra added bonus of killing bacteria and parasites.

Very inspiring. But I rarely cook, and now that I think of it, I don’t think I’ve made cookies in twenty years. But I love my induction stove, because it won’t set me on fire. Well, and it’s easy to clean. I rarely use it, too, so my electrical bills are really low.

I also have a toaster, and if you want a wasteful appliance, that’s one. I use it a lot more than the stove, though, now that I think about it, and I haven’t set myself on fire with it even once. Plus it’s a handsome toaster.