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.

20-hour Experience without electricity last week

Our power was out for 20 hours on Thursday and Friday, because of a big storm that came through Thursday evening.  It was an awful feeling without my phone and computer, plus I couldn’t use water because the electric pump for our well wasn’t working. 

Luckily I had a few bottles of water so I didn’t have to filter any from the cistern, or go out to the manual pump.  I cooked a microwave dinner in the solar oven, it only took about 10 minutes to warm up.  We used solar yard lights inside that night and had quite a bit of light.

When I came home late Thursday night after working at the temple, my husband was in the house.  He said he was so bored because of nothing to do, he had fallen asleep.  Then we thought of our little  5” battery powered TV that we have for emergencies, and we laughed because he hadn’t even remembered we had a TV that didn’t need electricity.

Successful Pizza in a Solar Oven

Go to http://myfoodstoragecookbook.com/ and look at her post of Oct. 5, 2011.  She teaches step-by-step how she made 6 medium pizzas completely out of shelf-stable ingredients and cooked them in a solar oven!  It was amazing, I never thought you could do that.

Photo thanks to http://myfoodstoragecookbook.com/  

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.

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.

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!

More solar oven videos

I wrote yesterday about the solar oven video that you should watch on FoodStorageMadeEasy.net. (Jodi showed how to cook rice in about a 5 minute video.)

Well, it looks like Juli and Jodi's sister-in-law, Crystal, is also covering solar ovens on HER blog this week.

Go to http://everydayfoodstorage.net/blog for June 6, 2011 and watch the 15 minute video about how to use a solar oven.  It also has great information, especially if you want to see what a solar oven looks like, what it is made of, how to use it, etc.

Crystal said this is just the first of several 15 minute videos she is going to post this week, so go back again to her blog tomorrow to see what is there.

Cooking Rice in a Solar Oven

Go to http://foodstoragemadeeasy.net/ and read yesterday's post (June 5, 2011) about cooking rice in a solar oven.  And watch the video about it.

I really like my Global Sun Oven, I have the same one Jodi has in the video, and it has worked well every time I have used it.

Did some more solar cooking

On Wednesday, it was a sunny day, so I decided to see how many things I could cook in my solar oven.  The only time you can use the solar oven is about 10 am-3 pm, and I learned that in November it cooked best between 11 am-2 pm.

First, I put in a pot of stew at 11:00 am.  The oven got up to 300 degrees, and I left the stew in there until 2:30 pm.  Wayne pronounced it "delicious!"

There was a space to the side of the pot, so I made half a box of chocolate cake and then divided the batter into 2 cans.  I sprayed the inside with Pam, and the cake later slid right out.

(These were cans I had saved, and spray painted the outside with black high-heat grill paint.  They were originally 26 oz or 28 oz. spaghetti sauce or kidney beans cans, which have white linings.)

The cakes baked in about an hour.

Then I added a bread pan full of cornbread.   That also baked in about an hour.  (I have learned that baked goods take about twice as long in the solar oven.)

I took the stew and the cornbread out at 2:30, and put in a pot of rice.  By 3 or 3:30, the solar oven was down to 200 degrees, so the rice wasn't cooking anymore (water boils at 212 degrees).  I had to finish cooking the rice on the stove.


So I learned that I could cook about 3 items in about 3-4 hours.  But all the quantities were small, about enough for 4 people maximum, without any leftovers.

BYU Living Essentials: Wendy Dewitt Solar Ovens

I bought a solar oven last month, and am beginning to learn how to use it. I went to the BYU Living Essentials website, and they had done a show with Wendy Dewitt where she explained how to do a solar oven. However, you can't watch the show, the only way to get the information is to read the transcript. Still, it has some good ideas.

http://www.byutv.org/livingessentials/files/406Trans.pdf

Day 5 Challenge- Extreme Weather Conditions

(Sorry, it has taken me a few days to load this post. I've been having internet trouble.)

Day 5- SATURDAY- NATURAL DISASTER- EXTREME WEATHER CONDITIONS

This was the challenge for Saturday. Depending on where you live, pick an extreme weather emergency common to your area and live it. (I chose conditions after a hurricane and during an ice storm. You will notice that I changed quite a few of the rules to make them fit the conditions for these two weather situations.) They said "you have water, but you don't have electricity or natural gas." I chose to say we have water, we don't have electricity, but WE DO have natural gas.

They said my fridge food is ruined, but I say my fridge food is fine, because right after a hurricane eating up your fridge food is the first thing you need to do. So today we are eating out of our fridge, and cooking in the solar oven and on the camp stove.

Note: We have not been able to buy anything from the store since Monday, Sept. 13. We ran out of real milk on Wednesday. So we have been living on powdered milk, powdered eggs, and all the food storage we have in our house.

My own personal goals for the day:

Cook more food in the solar oven.

About 11:00 am I mixed some banana bread batter, and put it into a bundt pan (the bundt pan was shiny aluminum and it should have been dark, but I don't own a dark one yet.) I put the pan into the preheated solar oven at 11:35. It baked for 1 hr and 25 min. and the temperature reached 325 degrees. I got it out at 1:00.

While it was in the solar oven, I put water and raw vegetables in a black pot, inside a clear oven-roasting bag, sitting on an aluminum pie pan to reflect the heat, and set it out in the sun to pre warm.

After I took the banana bread out of the solar oven, I immediately put the black pot into the solar oven at 1:00. When I opened the oven to switch the food, the temperature dropped from 325 to 250 degrees. Within 25 minutes it was back up to 320.

I cooked the vegetables for 40 minutes, the water wasn't boiling yet even though the thermometer said 320. But the carrots were a little softer than raw (I like them crunchy) so they were almost done.

Learn to use our camping stove.
I am afraid of fire so I don't like to use camp stoves or grills or matches. But our stove was surprisingly easy to light. I boiled some water in a coffeepot placed on the top.


Figure out how to hang blankets around our stairwell to trap the heat in the downstairs if we have to use our gas log to heat our living room.
We could put a board across and nail it into the wall, and fasten or nail a blanket to that. It will make holes in the wall, but they will be relatively easy to patch and paint later. It will be easier to stay warm in the one room with the gas log if we have the stairwell blocked off. Otherwise, all the heat will rise into the upstairs.

Things I learned:

After so many days without real milk, I finally drank some cold powdered milk (because I wanted milk with my banana bread.) I found that if I added a little vanilla to my glass of milk, it tasted a tiny bit like melted vanilla ice cream instead of that stale powdered milk flavor. It was actually good that way. I will never drink powdered milk plain again, I will always add vanilla from now on. (Note to self: Buy more vanilla for my food storage.)

Using my food storage in the past couple of years, I have learned that stocking up on Wheat Thins or mayonnaise or olives, etc. when they are on a really good sale is a great way to save money. I went to the grand opening of a grocery store near my home this week (yes, I was cheating on the Challenge because I wanted to see their Grand Opening prices, but I ended up not buying anything so technically I didn't actually cheat) and I couldn't find a single thing to buy for food storage. All of their loss leaders were things I had already stocked up on, and I didn't need any more. That tells me that most of my food has been purchased at the lowest prices I could find them during the year.

Cost of Solar Oven

Here is a video of how to set up a brand new solar oven
http://preparedplanet.com/Sun-Oven.html


I have posted some links to homemade solar ovens before, but now I have found some solar ovens to buy.

The Global Sun Oven package is $341, and that includes all the pots, pans, cookie sheets, thermometer, etc. Tempting, but that is a lot of money.

http://www.fivestarpreparedness.com/?section=Cooking#Cooking


Here is another Global Sun Oven without any pots and pans, just the oven. $224. This website also gives a quantity discount if you buy three or more. Anyone want to go in with me?

http://shop.solardirect.com/product_info.php?products_id=65&OVRAW=Solar%20Ovens&OVKEY=solar%20oven&OVMTC=standard&OVADID=39884325022&OVKWID=194145116022&OVCAMPGID=76265022&OVADGRPID=8819095910&OVNDID=ND2

Solar Oven Cooking by Wendy Dewitt

(The Walton Feed order is due by Sunday. I'll be attending a different ward's sacrament meeting but I will be at our Sunday School and Relief Society, give it to me in an envelope. Remember to look at your email to see who to make the check out to- it is Aimee S. but I won't put her last name here.)



My next purchase is going to be a solar oven. She has convinced me that I need one.

Video #7- Solar Oven Cooking
http://www.danielsparkward.com/fsv7.aspx

(Wendy Dewitt has a blog, and on her Nov. 12, 2008 blog post she gives basically her whole presentation.
http://everythingunderthesunblog.blogspot.com/2008_11_01_archive.html .)

Solar Ovens

As you know, I am interested in emergency preparedness, and I worry about things like hurricanes and ice storms, which knock out power in our area on a regular basis, every few years. So I like to see ways to cook or heat without power. Here are several articles with instructions and photos of solar ovens, which can boil water or bake bread or whatever.

Now I am trying to collect the cardboard boxes, plexiglass, black spray paint, etc. that I need to build one.

Making and using a solar cooker

Inventor turns cardboard boxes into eco-friendly oven

Solar-powered Cardboard Cooker