Food Part #2 Solar Oven

I have been planning on building a solar oven for quite awhile and last week finally got around to doing it! It was pretty cheap to do and not too hard either. Of course I had all the same sized boxes and the outer box is larger, so I had to adjust the plan and put two boxes together (hence the hexagonal shape). 

You probably cannot see the oven thermometer I put inside, but it's reading about 200 degrees. The temperature swung between 175 and 200 for most of the day. It was not a very hot day, low 80s, so I was happy with that. At least the oven got to the slow cooker temperature range. The biggest problem I had using the oven was that I had to move it because our lawn gets a lot of shade. I also did not do a good job stabilizing the lid so the flap fell a few times and decreased the temperature.

When I was done making the solar oven, I wanted to use it but hadn't thought of any recipes so I threw in some apples and sprinkled on cinnamon and sugar.

They cooked! I have no idea how long it actually took them to cook, but they were in the oven for about 5 hours. I think I will need to perfect my solar oven skills. I envision slow cooked baked potatoes. Solar ovens are not supposed to save much energy, since cooking only accounts for 4% of energy use. But I would loooove it if I could avoid heating up the house on warm days, which just happens to be the best days for solar cooking. If I really get into solar cooking I will probably upgrade to a better model and use wood instead of cardboard, nails instead of tape and staples. But for now this model seems to be sufficient for slow cooker speeds. 


This is the design that I modified for solar cooking: http://www.thefarm.org/charities/i4at/surv/solarbox.htm
There are lots of  other designs out there. This design is probably the simplest but also the most limiting: http://solarcooking.org/plans/newpanel.htm . Parabolic designs are supposed to get as hot as conventional ovens but also can result in burns and eye injuries. And of course, there's lots of companies willing to sell them to you if you don't want to build the solar oven.

Food Food Food!

I am doing several posts over the next several days on my food obsession hobby: #1 garden, #2 solar oven, and #3 cooking. Maybe I'm a little obsessed, but food is one of those things that you can't live without, so you might as well enjoy it! Charlie and I have been working on the garden, so here are a few pictures.

This is a partial view of the raised beds. The large plants in front are green beans, there are also peas and cucumbers a little further back on the trellis. Charlie and I made the trellises with wood and bamboo from Lowes ("we" made them is being generous, we shopped for supplies together and I scored marks for where to put the bamboo, Charlie did the rest). Much cheaper them buying them premade. The pots are peppers.

Close up of the peppers. We have green and red bell, and jalepenos (which are flowering now). The right pot is a squash. We might transplant it to the garden, we did not think there would be room before.

Baby bell pepper!

Green onions and carrots (the carrots are too small to see well). We bought green onions for baking, and they came with roots so we replanted them. They grow pretty fast.

Shallots and carrots. On the right corner you can also see one of the garlic.

Lettuce, which is not looking very good right now. Apparently lettuce does not do well when it's above 80. Oops. We'll try again later probably.

For the kitties, cat grass, which was looking great but now has been decimated from noms.

That's it for now! Happy Tuesday!