Lhe Norwegian omelette is famous, but who knows the “Norwegian pot”? At a time when we are all called to show sobriety, it should become the symbol of creative sobriety.
The sobriety that has been sold to us on all the TV shows and in all the morning radio shows since the start of the school year is only a long list without imagination of instructions called eco-gestures: reducing the heating temperature of our homes to 19°C is the flagship measure – not without absurdity, since this recommendation has been made to us since the first oil shocks of the 1970s, with the success that we know.
The president gravely announces the end of the era of abundance, but his government avoids any questioning of our lifestyles (except putting on a turtleneck). No doubt because no one in high places imagines that we can be happy by changing anything in our consumption habits.
Our power to act being summed up for the government in our purchasing power, our happiness would be strictly correlated to the maintenance of our routines. The sobriety that is boasted to us then consists in maintaining our habits, a little less comfort.
So let’s come to our cooking pot, as an illustration of the inventiveness to which we should all be called. A Norwegian cooking pot is nothing more than a classic cooking pot that you slide into a well-insulated rack and which will continue to cook for several hours, without any energy input.
Take, for example, lentils: bring them to a boil during your breakfast and go to work after placing your pot or casserole dish in its insulating container. Back home at lunchtime, your lentils are ready to eat, cooked through and still almost piping hot! Your hob has only been put into service for five minutes, to achieve the initial heat input. And building the locker with recycled insulation is within reach of a beginner handyman! At a time when we are still regularly promised that science will save us without us having to do anything, the low-tech approach deserves more than patronizing approval.
Cookers like solar thermal heating should equip all kitchens, especially those of precarious people. Knowing that the self-construction of these pots can be done in one to two hours with recycled material from waste collection centers, the actors of the social and solidarity economy and the circular economy could help to deploy these cooking methods. Third places, resource centre, fab lab… so many creative spaces to regain some control over our dependencies.
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