Amid rising energy how to boil tiny potatoes, Italian cooks go old-school to save gas In a town in Tuscany, some cooks are moving away from the stove to cook meals in boxes with thick wool lining. These portable ovens use the wool’s convection properties as a means of slow cooking.

Gloria Lucchesi cooks some local beans that she prepared using the cooking containers, on Nov. 12, in San Casciano dei Bagni, Italy. SAN CASCIANO DEI BAGNI, Italy — Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — and decision to throttle natural gas exports to Europe — has sent energy prices and utility bills higher. The rising costs have forced many households to get creative to save money. In this Tuscan town, some cooks have rediscovered the energy-saving cooking box, a tool their grandparents used during World War II. An enterprising nonprofit here is producing useful — and stylish — insulating boxes that use less gas than traditional Italian cooking. Sheep graze on sloping pastures in the hilltops that surround this village.

The animals are raised for meat, since their wool is poor quality. Fibra, a nonprofit cooperative, has found a way to use the sheared fleece. Gloria Lucchesi stands in the yard of her house, on Nov. 12, in San Casciano dei Bagni. Fibra — which means “thread and fiber” — invited NPR to her large home on the outskirts of town to demonstrate one of the cooking boxes it produces. As Lucchesi pulls steaming hot metal pots out of some odd-looking boxes, she says she found a book filled with tips on saving energy and cooking in times of scarcity. The book, published in 1941, belonged to her grandmother.

My grandmother’s booklet described what it called a cooking box made of wood and lined with straw,” she says. We realized that instead of straw, we could use our local wool. Gloria Lucchesi shows the booklet where she found the instructions for building the cooking boxes. The booklet belonged to her grandmother who used it to save energy during World War II. Gloria Lucchesi shows a cooking container, on Nov. Fibra is manufacturing two types of insulating boxes: one made from wood, the other from felt. Some have stylish cotton designer patterns on the outside.