Cooking dinner or re-heating leftovers using the energy of
the sun is just the bees knees to me. I bloody love it. There are many, many,
many reasons why solar cooking rules but let me very briefly illustrate one, energy
efficiency. First, think about how most conventional
cooking is done, there are many variations but the bottom line is that very old
sunlight is harvested and burnt, i.e. wood, coal and gas. Solar cooking
harvests sunlight directly, there is no need to wait for plants to convert
sunlight into matter (stored energy) and in the case of coal and gas wait for
the plants to die then be buried and
transformed over millions of years. By cutting out the middle man huge energy
savings can be made.
I am not going to go into detail about the larger scale
problems associated with the use of fossil fuels as everyone has some idea
about all of that, instead I would like to share some of the lesser known facts
about solar cooking that may convince you further to take up this creative culinary
practice that I am so in love with.
1)
It saves so much time and money, how much
exactly I haven’t measured yet. But a solar cooker can be made for under ten
bucks and costs nothing to run or maintain. It saves so much time because most
models can’t over cook food so you don’t need to watch over the food. You can
even take out frozen leftovers in the morning (even meat!) and put in the
cooker and leave all day, then when you come home from work dinner is ready. I
was using my solar panel cooker to re-heat leftovers at work, I’d put the food
out at 6:30 when I started and by smoko at 9:30 I’d have a steaming early
lunch, I never had to jostle around with everyone else trying to get a spot in
line for the microwave!
2)
It is healthier and generally tastier than
cooking in a gas or electric oven. This is because the cooking is slow, even
and at a lower temperature so vitamins, proteins, enzymes and all the other
goodies are not broken down the way they are in higher heat situations. The
lower heat also means the food is rarely in danger of becoming dry or
overcooked.
3)
It’s quiet, safe and also very portable. Panel
cookers also fold down flat so are easy to store.
4)
It is so much fun; I get so much satisfaction
when I cook with the solar cooker. There is something special about leaving the
sun to do all the work, it’s a feeling like I’ve outsmarted something or
someone, like getting free internet from somewhere or dumpster diving a big
block of Swiss cheese.
For more info check out the solarcooking.org for plans for making
solar cookers and everything else solar cooking. I’ll be posting up a how-to-build
a solar panel cooker very soon so stay tuned, unless hopefully you’ve already
gone out and built your own.
Cooking with sunshine by Lorraine Anderson and Rick Palkovic
is a great reference for this topic, it contains plans for building cookers as
well as heaps of recipes.
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