Still using my solar oven

In my other house, it was such a pain to use my solar oven because I had to keep it in the upstairs spare bedroom.  Now, it is much more convenient because I keep it in the garage.

On a sunny day a couple of months ago,  I had some potatoes setting on the counter, and I saw them one morning and decided I would throw them into this black pot with a little water, chopped onions, and seasoning.

I put them outside about 9:00 am, and forgot about them for about 5 hours.  When I looked in the pot at 2:00 pm, the potatoes and onions were soft and tender like they had been cooked in a crock pot.  They were delicious!   My only regret was that I hadn't put a roast in there with them, that would have been even better.

This is what I learned: 

I was under the impression that I had to go out and turn the solar oven to face the sun about every half an hour.  I guess that isn't necessary. 

I thought I had to open the solar oven periodically and wipe the condensation off of the glass.  It appears that wasn't necessary either.

My decision:  I should use my solar oven more often!  It is easier than I thought.

Bio Lite Campstove can charge your phone

 I got one of these stoves, and it works great.  You just light the fuel (twigs, sticks, etc.) and as the stove heats up it creates electricity for the USB port.

Some things to think about before a hurricane

Prepare now for what could be an active hurricane season.  If we had a direct hit, we could be without power and without grocery stores for 7 days or longer.  (Think worst case scenario like Katrina.) 

Ask yourselves:

Do we have alternative lighting, and batteries?

Do we have alternative ways to cook food?

Do we have enough water stored or ways to purify water?

Do we have cash on hand if there are no ATMs?

Do we keep at least a 1/2 tank of gas in our cars at all times?

Do we have easily prepared meals which do not need refrigeration? (These are called "shelf stable" meals.)

Do we have a non-electric can opener?

Do we own several weeks worth of baby formula, diapers, food, toiletries, and prescriptions?

Do we have a battery powered radio?


Can we save some clean sodapop and juice bottles to store more water in the back of closets?  This could be used to flush toilets.

Can we fit more canned goods under the bed?

Can we buy some solar powered yard lights? (These work great as indoor lighting when the power is off.)

Can we get another 20 lb. propane tank to use with our grill?

Can we buy an alternative recharger for our cell phones?

Do we have a paper copy of the phone numbers of friends and family, if our cell phone is dead?

If the GPS is dead, do we have a paper map to help us evacuate?

Can we buy a generator, or at the minimum, a small solar battery charger and rechargeable batteries?

Cool Propane Oven

 Our ward campout was last night, and one of the greatest things I saw there was the C. family's propane oven.

It is a self-contained unit which attaches to a small propane bottle.  They baked a batch of chocolate chip cookies in it, and generously shared them.

What a great piece of equipment!

John C. baking chocolate chip cookies at the Ward Campout in a propane oven.
(Photo taken by Heidi C.)

We love our StoveTec outdoor stove

http://www.stovetec.net/us/index.php

This really cooks well, using charcoal or wood.  I really like ours.

It is quite heavy, you wouldn't want to carry it very far.

Here is a picture of ours, you feed the wood in through the little door at the bottom.  As the wood is being burned, it rests on the metal rack, and you push it in a little at a time.  All the heat is concentrated right up the hole.  You can see the open door flap with the very thick ceramic lining.  The whole stove is lined with that ceramic.

Tornado thoughts from Alabama, 2011

I got this off another website.  Used by permission.

May 2011- This is a letter my brother sent to our family this past week. In it are his thoughts surrounding prepardness and the recent Tornado disasters in Alabama for which he was involved with. He lives in Northern Alabama...... "Wednesday, April 27th, 2011, Alabama got hit hard by mother nature via a ton of tornadoes. Our county took a massive hit. Over 300 families lost their homes. Every transmission line that the Tennessee Valley Authority - TVA (produces electricity for North Alabama) had into our area was severed. All power lost to about 500,000 people. In addition, Huntsville Utilities, who distributes the power to us, took massive damage. They both worked miracles and have restored power to about 80% of customers by the end of day 6. We got power back almost 5 days after the storm. During the storm (that lasted about 8 hours) and for the 8 hours after the storm, I spent in the disaster area doing rescue work, including swift-water rescues due to the large amount of rain we had. Many people not hit by tornadoes still suffered due to flooding and since no power, they had no idea water was rising so fast and so high. I got home at 3am for a few hours sleep. Okay, what we did right preparing for not having power for 5 days and some lessons learned from our experience. We had our 72 hour kits but didn't need them (this time) but many families hit by the tornado sure could have used them. Many families as we helped them out of their rubble piles that used to be homes, tried to grab a few things to take - several said they wished they had listened when told to prepare the kits (and/or taken them to shelter with them so they could find them afterwards). We had our 1 year supply of food and over 500 gallons of drinking water - again, we were lucky and did not need them. You will be surprised on how much your life depends on electricity! Do not panic. So many folks just could not handle the situation. Many of our neighbors left town (at great expense). We stayed and had a decent time. Keep calm, stay relaxed. Enjoy life without distractions such as TV, Internet, cellphones, etc. Bring out the board games, go for a walk or riding bikes, read some books. Our family had a bunch of fun during this time. Keep your cars fueled. A few months ago, Xina and I decided to keep cars at least half full of fuel. This paid off hugh as gas stations were closed due to power failure. So, try not to let fuel tank get too low. If you have to evacuate, loose power, etc, try to at least have half a tank of fuel. Have car chargers and inverters so you can charge cellphones and other important electrical items. We were able to charge cellphones and Xina's Coclear Implant batteries in the car. I was also able to charge my laptop and paging 2-way radios (for fire and rescue squad purposes) in car. Many did not have a car charger! When we switched to a cordless phone system in our house years ago, I kept some of the corded type phones around in case of a power failure. Paid off, I was able to plug three into different parts of the house. Note, phones worked for a couple days but did go out totally for about 18 hours before coming back up. Do not rely on cellphones. While most of the cellphone system was untouched by storm, the power for the towers switched to batteries and they went down after a couple days. In addition, an even bigger issue, so MANY folks started using them, that it was VERY hard to get a call out (was much easier to receive them as Janet found out). Have backup plans in place. Try to keep off the cellphones during the immediate aftermath of a disaster as public safety folks might need whatever capability is left as radio systems are effected as well (the city's main system even shut down due to overload, for about an hour). Fridge and freezers will keep stuff cool for about 24 hours after power goes out if you do not keep opening them up. Once they start warming up, have a cookout for everyone (yes, you can cook hot pockets on a BBQ grill). Have food that does not spoil. Have a simple camp stove you can cook on for food that you want to eat warm. Canned food can be cooked on a BBQ grill as well (open first and remove label). Keep extra on hand. We did not have to dig into any of our food storage. Many folks could not figure out how to survive a couple days without fridges/freezers... I was shocked on how many reacted. Water may or may not be available during a power failure. Luckily our city water system had back up power for water treatment plants but we were prepared and had 500 gallons of drinking water stored plus quickly filled up another 125 gallons of bathtubs and jugs to have bathing, dish washing, etc water. Electric hot water heaters will be missed. Have a solar water heater if you want to take warm showers. I rigged one up and it was very nice. Beats VERY cold showers! Have a stash of cash, small bills. ATMs are going to be down, banks closed, credit card machines not working. We worked over the past two years to have several stashes of cash hidden so we could use in emergencies. We did use this item of preparedness. Keep plenty of batteries on hand. Make sure each family member has their own flashlight (our family members each have a head light and hand held flashlight). Have candles as backups to flashlights, with candle holders to carry them by. Shorter candles so they do not fall over. We found we had no good holders, but plan on purchasing some VERY soon. Battery operated radio with a list taped to it of news stations. We did not have this and would have been hard pressed to know what was going on if we didn't have back up internet access. Another purchase that will be done VERY soon! Again, keeping your cool and staying calm are the biggest ways to handle the situation. Being prepared helps to you in the regards."

Got Charcoal?

In the Ensign January 1974, President Ezra Taft Benson quoted President J. Reuben Clark, Jr., of the First Presidency, who in April 1937 had said: 

“Let every head of every household see to it that he has on hand enough food and clothing, and, where possible, fuel also, for at least a year ahead. "

Do you have enough fuel for a year?  If not, want to try to get enough fuel for a few months?

Here is the calculation for how much charcoal you need to cook 365 meals: 

FORMULA 

Take the # of Dutch Oven meals planned for the year____ X 20 briquettes per meal =_____ divided by 30 briquettes per pound = pounds needed.

EXAMPLE

365 meals X 20 briquettes = 7300 divided by 30 = about 243 lbs or about 12-20 lb bags, or about 16 – 15 lb bags

Someone else said Kingston charcoal was 17 or 18 briquettes per pound.  So that example would be:

365 meals x 20 briquettes per meal = 7300 divided by 18 = about 405 lbs or 20-20 lb bags.

The picture above shows four 13.9 lb. bags, two 23 lb. bags, and two 20 lb. bags. (Why do they make every bag a different size?!!???!!)  So that is either a half a year's fuel or a third of a year's fuel, for cooking.

Of course I have a solar oven, so on sunny days I won't be using the charcoal.  So I hope that will stretch it farther.

Ammo Can Stove

Here is an interesting cookstove to make out of an ammo can:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Ammo-can-stove/

Bread in a solar oven

http://myfoodstoragecookbook.com/2011/09/23/baking-bread-in-a-sun-oven/

Here are some great instructions on how to bake bread in a solar oven.

Get your Camp Stove Ready for the Ward Campout

Our ward is having a ward campout in a couple of weeks, and I am arranging a "Treasure Hunt" for the kids and the adults.  To do the treasure hunt, each person will need to go around and see what cooking methods the other families are using to cook their evening meal.  My goal is for my ward members to get an idea of all the types of camp stoves and portable grills that are available, and see how they work.

We won't be having a cooking competition (no judges are going to eat your food) but I hope the family chef will be able to answer questions about their cooking equipment, especially to help those people who don't own any camp stove or grill yet.

To my ward members:  Email me and tell me:
       if you are going on the ward camp out
       what type of cooking equipment you will be using
       if you are willing to tell people about your cooking equipment as they tour around


For your information, here are some current prices of campstoves and portable grills:

(I just googled various camping/cooking phrases to come up with these, I am not trying to advertise a certain brand.  Google it yourself to come up with a lot more ideas.)

L.L. Bean:   http://www.llbean.com/llb/shop/1099?page=camp-kitchen

Cabela's:  http://www.cabelas.com/camp-blind-stoves.shtml

Review of best portable grills:
http://www.housekool.com/shopping/?shkw=Portable%20Grill&keywords=Portable%20Grill&gclid=CIXku7P0q6sCFZB35QodBDi39Q

Alcohol stoves for backpacking:
http://www.pastprimitive.com/index.php?route=product/category&path=59

Deadwood Stove:
http://deadwoodstove.com/products-page/stoves/deadwood-stove/

Emberlit Camp Stove

http://www.survivalpodcast.net/store/index.php?dispatch=products.view&product_id=29803

This website has a 23 minute video which shows how this camp stove works.

I've never been a camper or a scouter.  So I appreciated this guy's video.

 I thought it was interesting to learn how he starts a fire, and how he feeds the wood into the little stove, how he boils an omelette by putting the ingredients inside a ziploc bag and placing the bag in boiling water.

And he cooked the omelette and bacon using only a small handful of sticks.

A Campfire Cooking Rack

Don't you hate me for getting all these great yard sale finds?

Here is another piece of camping equipment I got for only $4.  It is a foldable rack to place over a campfire.  It is about 20" by 12", and it is about 12" tall.  I will be able to set pots and pans or hot dogs right on it.  We haven't been able to figure out why the grill has narrower openings on one side and wider openings on the other.

Maybe I could even set my Coleman camping oven on it.  I will have to test that out.

Oven for Coleman Stove

I considered it a miracle when I found this (30 year old?) Coleman camping oven at a yard sale for $4.  It folds down completely flat, but when you put it together, it works like a charm.  It even has a temperature gauge on the front.

As you can see, I just set it on top of my propane camping stove, and turned on the flame.

It has a rack inside just like a normal oven.  I baked this carrot cake in about the same time it would take to bake one in my electric oven.  I probably should have put the rack a bit higher, I think the bottom of the cake was a little burned.

(In case you are wondering, this is the carrot cake batter that I had intended to bake inside my solar oven, but by the time I mixed up the batter, clouds had covered the sun so I was forced to bake it in this oven instead.)

My Coleman Stove

Here is the Coleman stove that I bought at a yard sale for $5.  The guy even threw in the bottle of propane for free! I was quite proud of myself for getting such a good deal.

Wayne had an older Coleman stove, but he likes mine better because it is so shiny and new.  His has one feature mine doesn't have, his has a click start ignition, so you can click it and it makes a spark to light the gas on fire.  With mine, I have to stick that long lighter in the hole on the front and light the gas.

If you don't have a lighter, you could use matches, but I haven't tried that because I am afraid of burning my fingers.

You could also use this stove with a 20 pound refillable propane tank (the green one you see here is a 1-pound non-refillable tank), but to do so you would have to buy a $15 adapter tube.  I got one of those at Walmart, so I am ready to go.

I told Wayne that since I am collecting all my own emergency equipment now, he is in charge of his and I am in charge of mine.  His garage is too dirty, so I am storing my stuff somewhere else, where I can find it.

Solar Oven Nemesis

 This summer has been very hot here in North Carolina.  For days at a time, it has reached 99-104 degrees.  There is no way I will turn on the electric oven in my house, because that would just make the air conditioner work that much harder.

So I have been trying to use my solar oven a lot.  I look outside, and see a sunny sky, and decide its time to bake something.  The problem is, by the time I have put the solar oven outside to preheat, and mixed up the batter, CLOUDS HAVE FORMED.  It makes me so mad!

One day last week that happened, and I had to bake the carrot cake batter in a Coleman oven on top of my Coleman grill.  (I'll put that in a different post.)

Another day it was half sunny, half cloudy.  I decided to test the solar oven and see how it would work when the sun kept going away.

I put a small pizza stone inside the solar oven to get hot.  (You can see it, it is the beige thing under the cake pan.)  I think the pizza stone helped the oven to stay warm while the sun was behind the clouds.

Then I put a tortilla with shredded cheese in the solar oven.  The oven only got up to 160 degrees, but the cheese was nice and melty.  (Note:  If it had been completely overcast, the oven wouldn't have heated up at all.)

What I learned:  The solar oven won't get up to the optimum temperature of 300 or 350 degrees when it is cloudy, but if you can get intermittent sun you can still heat things up.

Black Cans for Solar Oven

You can also save some large cans and spray paint them black.  (Most of these had held kidney beans or spaghetti sauce.)   Use black High Heat Grill paint, you can find it in the spray paint aisle of any hardware store.  I just lay the cans and bottles on the grass and spray them.  ( The grass gets mowed later and then the evidence is gone.)

You can use these instead of pots and pans inside your solar oven.

Useful Little Solar Oven

Here is a homemade solar oven.  I sprayed a large glass pickle jar and lid with black High Heat Grill Paint, you can find it in the spray paint aisle of any hardware store.

Put a strip of tape from top to bottom.  Spray paint the whole jar and lid black.  Then pull off the tape strip (this creates a clear place where you can see if the food is boiling.)

Just spray the outside of the jar.

Buy oven roasting turkey bags, or oven roasting poultry bags.

Fill the jar with something that only needs heated, like a can of soup.  Put on the lid.  It won't come to a boil, it will only heat up to about 160 degrees.

Puff the bag around the jar.  Seal it with a twist tie.  Set the jar on something to insulate it from the ground (mine is setting on a block of wood.)  Set it in full sun.  (This will not work on a cloudy day.)

If you dump a can of soup into this jar, it will be hot enough to eat in about a half an hour.

Solar Oven: Eggs, and cake in cans

Here is a photo of my solar oven when I was baking some cake batter inside clean cans (I think these were originally 26.5 oz. spaghetti sauce cans.)  The reason I used the cans is because I don't have the perfect pans yet that fit inside my solar oven.  I've got to order some.  Until then, I just use whatever I can find.  


Note: I spray painted the outside of the cans with High Heat Black Grill Paint.


The other easy thing to cook in the solar oven is eggs. These turn out just like boiled eggs but they aren't boiled, since you use no water. Just place the raw eggs in the solar oven and let them cook. Since we have so many random clouds passing by all the time, I think I have left the eggs in there about an hour, but for full sun it may take shorter.

The eggs were "boiled" perfectly.

In a microwave, you can't put eggs in the shell and cook them, because they will explode. But for some reason, they don't explode in the solar oven.

The only weird thing is that they get a  spot on the shell where they sit on the oven shelf.  But it doesn't affect the insides.

Solar Oven: Corn on the cob!

Today I put unshucked corn into the solar oven at 1:00 and got it out at 2:30.  It was sunny most of the time, but a few clouds passed by here and there.

I took it out after an hour and a half, shucked it, and ate it.  IT WAS DELICIOUS!

Now this will be my very favorite thing to cook in the solar oven.  It takes zero preparation, and you don't have to worry about timing it perfectly.  You really can't overcook anything because its more like a crockpot, things just cook slowly in there.

Solar oven videos, Killing the bugs on my Summer Squash plants

I really enjoyed watching the eleven different YouTube videos about solar oven cooking on  http://everydayfoodstorage.net/blog .  I've been cooking with my solar oven this week, and have learned that North Carolina skies are usually clear in the morning, but they start clouding up around noon.  I have had several items that took hours and hours to cook in the solar oven because the clouds kept going over the sun.

I have also watched several videos about common garden bugs.  I learned that the bugs I found all over my summer squash plants are called squash beetles, and I learned to kill them with homemade insecticide.  Just add some liquid dish detergent to a squirt bottle of water, and squirt the bugs with the soapy water.  It really kills them, within about a minute.  It is GREAT!