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.