Can a dinner heat you up?

Lake Garda — September 2022

I hate doing things alone, that’s why I tried to convince every possible person in my life to cut their energy consumption with me, even if not at my house.

One of these people is my boyfriend (he would put up with me anyway so why not get something useful out of it!), and coincidentally he has a lake house near Lago di Garda.

While here in Milan the weather is quite nice, up there it was like entering the Arctic Circle (at least for a cold-hater like me).

The solution? grilling dinner and heating up the house at the same time

We at first used the fireplace to warm up the house, and them used the burning coal to cook our dinner: grilled vegetables and meat.

We had some frozen sausages: instead of leaving them out to defrost or putting them in the microwave like we usually do, we moved them from the freezer to the fridge: not only does this ensure that the food is carefully defrosted, the presence of frozen food cools down the refrigerator interior, reducing the amount of work that the compressor has to do = less energy. This is really useful because, at least for me, the fridge is the appliance that uses the bigger amount of energy in the house, being switchen on 24/7.

To end our romantic evening we wanted to use less electricity possible in the home, so instead of watching a movie on our laptop or tv we went to see “cinema sotto le stelle”, literally “cinema under the stars”. It’s an ecofriendly event where people sit on the ground with their blankets to watch a movie together on the big screen.