Dinner With Candles

There are few things quite as alluring as a candle-lit dinner... especially if you happen to be out of gas and/or electricity, so you used the candles to actually cook said dinner.

Don't ask me why - I'd rather not know - but many people seem to be inordinately interested in improvised cooking and other domestic appliances these days. But whatever the reason, yes, it's fun and it's always useful to know that there IS something you could do if you happened to find yourself in an emergency.

YouTube is full of videos about "cooking with candles". I have only seen one or two, but while the ingenuity of those men is by all means commendable, I had to wonder: 

a) why don't they cover the pot while it's heating and/or while the food is cooking (rather obviously, you save a LOT of heat and speed up the process); 

and 

b) why don't they use a simple kitchen stove grate to cover the candles?

The candles used are typically tea candles, placed in convenient little metal containers. But because the authors of the videos improvised a contraption that serves as a "grate" of sorts, they can only use a few candles at a time, thereby reducing the cooking power. If they used a ready-made kitchen stove grate, they could place  many more candles underneath it, replicating the power and effect of a functional stove.
Heck, if you're near a kitchen stove that for some reason is not functional, you could simply place the tea candles on the stove itself, underneath the grates.

I've tried it; it worked well.


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