My wife always boils more water for tea than she needs in the morning (this seems to be a common habit). I pour the excess in a large bowl and use it for shaving. Saves lots of water, too, as opposed to running the bathroom sink until it gets hot.

Hi, Adam. I want to come try some!

Recipe for dishwasher lasagna florentine here...
http://www.partselect.com/JustForFun/Dishwasher-Lasagna.aspx

How tightly do you have to wrap it to prevent toxic soap from getting in your food?

You might consider avoiding the use of the aluminum foil and replace it with a glass container tightly sealed with a plastic snap on lid, (like a dishwasher safe reuseable storage container). This way you avoid the energy waste of using the aluminum foil. You just need to experiment to find a container that won't pop open during the process.

It seems to me that the amount you can "save" by doubling-up appliances depends entirely on how inefficient and wasteful your appliances are to begin with. If your dishwasher is only heating enough water for its contents, or your toaster oven only producing enough heat for your toast, then you could wind up wasting *more* energy to heat your extra food inefficiently rather than, say, in the microwave where no heat goes to waste.

And never mind the question of what happens if your oily fish leaks onto the dishes below... do you wash the dishes again?

IMHO the recipes for cooking food on your car engine -- where *all* the heat is waste -- are more ecological than ones that use heat that was generated intentionally for another purpose.

How about not using dishwasher at all? Our family does not use dishwasher and we save a lot of water and energy by resorting to hand washing our dishes.

As BlueBoatHome points out, you have to be wasting something first. When we run the dishwasher, it is FULL. No space available for even a glass, let alone a salmon. I'm an engineer, so I take pride in packing the maximum dishes in the most efficient manner.

Furthermore, we tend to have dirty dishes after dinner, not before. Salmon for desert? Or are you leaving the dirty dishes from the prior day to get hard, crusty and then require the 'potscrubber' or 'heavy' cycle?

Like most things that save energy, you need to be looking at the full spectrum, not just the point aspect of getting salmon cooked 'for free'.

I'm just curious, was the dishwasher set to use hot air drying as well? We turn that off on our dishwasher to save energy. Would the salmon cook just during the wash cycle or does it need a heated drying phase as well?

Regarding hand-washing versus dishwasher, my understanding is that the dishwasher may actually use less water than hand washing if and only if you always run only when completely full and do not waste a lot of water pre-rinsing. I'm not positive about this.

I haven't used the "dry" cycle of my dishwasher for a very long time, trying to be sensitive to my energy use. Your recipe didn't specify if the dry cycle needs to be utilized for the poaching to be successful. I'm thinking it's a crucial step in the process, since I'm sure the reason this works is the amount of steam in the dishwasher. Is running the dishwasher on "hot start" (which still produces steam), enough to cook the salmon, or is the hot dry cycle needed as well?

If it's the latter, then I'm probably just as good using my stove, as it would require more energy from my dishwasher than I currently use.

Why are you using toxic soap in your dishwasher? There are many choices for non-toxic products including no-soap at all!

You only need the lemon juice to give it a cooked texture (how Ceviche is prepared), so long as it is fresh, disease-free fish:
http://www.chow.com/stories/10667.

No dishwasher needed unless you're unsure as to the quality of the fish.

I boil eggs sometimes in the kettle. Except for the occasional explosion (very messy!) the eggs come out perfect. It's works best if you are boiling a lot of water for tea.

What's up with (North)Americans and their dishwashers? What happened to the goold old habit of HAND washing dishes on the kitchen sink?

Are (North)Americans so "busy" that they can't spend 15 minutes manually doing the dishes? At one time I used to hate it, but I discovered the solution.... I put a tiny 3" LCD (10-watt energy usage) so I can watch the news channel while doing the dishes. It's distracting, relaxing, and my blood pressure doesn't peak when I see some ugly politicos on the newscast, as I take revenge on the dishes.

Try it... I live down in Argentina, an entire country of 40M people most of them doing the dishes manually. Dishwshers are rare down here. I don't have any stats but I'd guess there's much less than 10 per cent of households having one. It's considered an expensive eccentricity for the rich.

FC
PS: I suggest you read this...
http://www.naturalnews.com/001061.html

http://www.slate.com/id/2189612/

I read the linked article oi...

"But your margin of victory may be disappointingly slight, and hardly enough to justify all the extra time."

"all the extra time" sheesh!

The whole "study" compares apples and oranges... water usage... how about the carbon emissions needed to MANUFACTURE each dishwasher? How many kilowatts hour do you use when hand washing dishes? ZERO, NOTHING, NADA.

If the best argument for electric dishwashers that use "just" less than one kilowatt hour (that's an awful lot) vs ZERO for handwashing is that hand-washing "uses more water" then I rest my case.

:-P
FC

Fernando,
Please do not rest your case until you consider the prevalence of electric water heaters in our country, especially in apartment environments. That doesn't look like "nada" to me.. Of course it takes kilowatt hours to hand wash dishes.. Come on now...

If you are serious about going green, there's no way you use an electric dishwasher. Apart from the carbon footprint you created by purchasing, transporting and installing the machine, plus the ongoing damage you do while operating the dishwasher, there's no need. One solar water heater will heat enough water to fill the sink so you can wash dishes the way your grandparents did.
Roll up your sleeves people!

I agree with John.

Plus, to the anonymous commenter before him... of course heating water is needed BOTH for hand washing dishes and when using the dishwasher.

But the electric dishwasher has MORE components than just heating water, a water pump and valves,for instance, plus control circuitry, all that is electric powered. When you hand wash dishes you only use the water-heating part of the process.

And down here electrical water heaters are rare, as the country has a pretty extensive natural gas grid, most if not all apartments in big cities have natural gas.

Also, almost all taxi cabs down here run on CNG (compressed natural gas).

FC