I brought two DIY solar cookers to my cat-sitting gig in “THE VALLEY”. Because they are so portable, and because this home has every modern convenience + solar panels, it’s a cheap thrill to do something low tech and hands on.
How portable are these cookers? The five pieces of poster board form a 14″x14″x1/2″ packet!
4- 14″ sq, 1-10″ sq. posterboard, 4 clothes pegs and a shoelace.
Or, you can fold it like a fig and invert it into a shopping bag.
Invert it into shopping bag
Fold it like a fig
The neighbors gifted me some freshly caught tuna and I had butternut squash from LA EcoVillage garden. I always use a meat thermometer when cooking fish or meat. The covered pan is wrapped in an oven roasting bag to trap heat.
Tuna and squash
Use thermometer for meat or fish
In spite of the cooker’s curled edges, the cooker cooked the cabbage.
Despite the warped pasteboard edges of the cooker on the right, a pot of cabbage was well cooked.
Solar cooker tip: Don’t expose the poster board cooker to moisture – not even over night dew – because the edges will curl. After a few days under heavy books, they resumed their former shape. At the EcoVillage, when I store the cookers outdoors, I wrap them in plastic.
Solar Cooker Demonstrations: It is my intention to plan a solar cooker demonstration to fund raise for Solar Cookers International and for the LA EcoVillage, so stay tuned for that announcement.
Eggs cook faster in a solar oven than in the cooker. I haven’t got the knack of predicting whether they will be hard or soft cooked, yet, so I just try one & decide whether or not to let them cook longer.
Eggs in DIY solar cooker
place the eggs you want to cook in a cardboard egg carton
remove the top of egg carton
put carton in solar cooker or solar oven
after temperature reaches 212℉, continue cooking until you think they’re done the way you like them.
When Jamie’s mom visited EcoVillage in June, Jamie, her mom, Sage and I made an insulated box cooker that didn’t get very hot. I’ve been fusing with it and got it over 300℉ by putting two half bricks in the bottom, the diy mylar solar cooker on bricks, a black pan on the bottom of the cooker & the food I want to cook in a dark pot inside a roasting bag! I think I’ll rename it the Russian Doll Solar cooker. Warming Feature: the bricks are are still warm after food is cooked, so remove mylar cooker, put food in box & close box lids. After 2 hours, it was 130℉.
Ambient temperature was low 90s when I decided there might be enough sun breaking through to try cooking in the pre-heated sun oven: 1/2 lb. ham, 2 fish fillets, 2 chicken legs, 2 large sweet potatoes and green beans. I don’t recall what time I began, but by 1:45 pm voilà
in which I nap too long and try to crank up the temperature in the cooker
After a bike ride and lunch, I napped while the veggies were roasting. My plan was to roast chicken next, but it was 3:30. Is that too late? I spread 2 brined chicken thighs, seasoned with lemon & oregano over a bed of onions, cumin seeds & lemon grass; put the pan in a roasting bag and onto a metal rack in the cooker, (to let heat circulate under the pan). I pegged two halves of a large roasting bag across the cooker opening: 285° on the pan’s lid and digital in chicken probe = 156°.
Boost cooker T with roasting bags & metal rack.Not wanting to ptomaine myself, I cooked chicken in toaster oven, 285° for 9 min. until chicken was probe was 165°.
Day 10 – Can the cooker temperature increase enough to roast an undelicate “delicata” squash?
At the farmers’ market yesterday I bought what appeared to be a delicata squash on steroids. When I tried to slice it this morning I discovered that, instead of the delicate, edible skin of a delicata, it had the rind of a gourd. I wanted to make a bean-boat, so I scooped out the center, flipped the lids of two cans of organic Goya beans* -and the cats appeared in a nano second.
They became polite but disinterested observers as soon as they discovered that the cans were not tuna!Bean boat topped with ginger and remaining scooped squash. Re: leftovers. I love the beeswax cotton wraps – in lieu of plastic.
Winter squashes need 400° + to bake.
• How close can we get?
• Will slow cooking compensate for temperature?
At 10 am I did the same routine as yesterday: pan in roasting bag on metal rack, covered cooker with roasting bag.
T = 310° when I returned from bike ride at 1 pm – and squash was cooked. (Taste is bland, not like delicata!). (Did I mention that there was only 1 farmer and a lot of misc. vendors at the NoHo Farmer’s market.)
Bike ride side note. Used my new telescope to watch cormorants feed their “babies” in their nests high in the trees at Sepulveda Nature Preserve.
for the Solar Cooking Workshop on Saturday, Aug. 27. If you can’t make that one, we’ll plan to channel the rays again in Oct., and maybe Tea and Solar Treats in Sept.
Product placements are part of my effort to demonstrate cooking with easily accessible food.
Hot rocks and patio furniture in lieu of our EcoVillage clotheslines. Back ground, modified DIY solar cooker is trying to bake cornbread. Stay tuned for results on that.
Our August 27 solar cooking workshop attracted attention from Luther Krueger who hosts Saturday Solar Cooking Brunches in Minneapolis, gives s.c. demos across the state and interviews solar cooks around the country. He says, I think what you are doing is really up at the top for getting the message out–and DIY cookers are soon to be a big focus of my ….outreach efforts.
to the Saibaba Ashram, Maharashtra, India where an enormous solar cooking system produces thousands of meals daily and saves nearly 220,000 lbs of cooking gas per year;
to refugee camps and villages where solar cookers reduce the need for kerosene, charcoal and dangerous wood-gathering forays for cooking and sterilizing drinking water.
I’m on a solar cooking sabbatical
Cookers made from poster board, weigh 8 oz. Disassemble into 14″x14″x1″ easily portable package.
People asked me about solar cooking on camping trips and solar cooking for unhoused people so I brought these DIY solar cookers, made by Sage and me, to my cat-sitting gig. I’m challenging myself to use these cookers in lieu of gas or electric appliances as often as possible because the yard here has all-day sun.
Solar cooking is easy. It’s very forgiving: it doesn’t burn food.
That said, there are some foods- like these chicken thighs and grains – that will sit happily in the heat after they’re safely cooked.
Digital probe read 167℉. Cooker temp was 320℉. Ambient T = 96℉. Pre-soak buckwheat, millet; rinse quinoa to reduce cooking time & cooking water needed.Here’s a quicker alternative. 1 c rice mixture + 2 c. water.
Other foods, like these veggies – want to be monitored a little closer if you want them crispy.
Green beans, chayote and spinach leaves from Eco-village gardenSummer squash, carrots, apples
I searched for some quick cooking vegetarian/vegan protein and found this line of “riced” products made from chickpeas & lentils.
I got 3 servings from this packet. Mixed with veggies it was delicious; on it’s own it’s a little gritty.
Ready to channel the sun?
Get your Eventbrite ticket to join Sage and me on Saturday, August 27 at the LA EcoVillage, as we cook and bake in 4 varieties of solar cookers. We’ll demonstrate how to make a simple cooker and have low cost DIY kits available for purchase. Limited to 12 participants including youth at least 10 y.o.
Solar and mental reflections while LA Eco-village kids bake with the sun
Collecting the mulberry blizzard on tarps makes harvesting easier. Why aren’t more people harvesting?Reflectors direct the sun’s heat into this cork-insulated oven. (Made in Portugal using renewable cork). It gets hotter than boiling water, so only adults should put food in & take it out.This collapsible reflecting cooker uses heat proof bowls to create an oven. It’s better for cooking than baking. Why is solar cooker use mainly a science project? Where resources are scarce, many people use a variety of solar cookers – from $5 Kyoto boxes to Solar Cookers International’s projects to cook food, sterilize water and reduce fossil fuel use. Now that many people are working from home, why hasn’t solar cooking caught on? While I try to choose fast cooking recipes to fit into a 90 min. demonstration, when I’m cooking on my own time, I usually food – especially beans & lentils – in the oven in the morning and come take them out at sundown, a little dry, but not burned!Pulling stems & cores from mulberries.Kids take turns to prep, add and mix ingredients, (see end of post for recipe).Muffins at the edge of the oven were a little gooey. Next time, rotate the pan 1/2 way through baking.
To accommodate a wide variety of dietary preferences & needs I bake gluten free, vegan food for demonstrations. Here’s one of many that I have adopted from Rhian
▢60 g (¼ cup) coconut oil (or sub olive or vegetable oil)
▢200 ml (⅘ cup) unsweetened almond milk (or any other plant-based milk)
▢2 tablespoons lemon juice *
▢8 tablespoons maple syrup (or sub any other sweetener) ( i used 4 Tbsp)
▢1 teaspoon vanilla extract
▢Pinch salt
▢150 g (1 ¼ cup) ground almonds (almond meal) **
▢150 g (1 ¼ cup) gluten-free flour blend (or sub plain flour if not gluten-free)
▢2 heaped teaspoons baking powder (ensure gluten-free if necessary)
▢¼ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
▢100 g (1 cup) fresh blueberries ( i subtituted mulberries)
Instructions
Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius (350 degrees Fahrenheit). I preheated sun oven for 1/2 hr.
Place the coconut oil in a large bowl and melt over a saucepan of boiling water or in the microwave (skip this step if using any other oil). (We melted it in sun oven)
Once melted, add the milk to the same bowl along with the lemon juice, maple syrup, vanilla, salt and ground almonds.
Sift in the flour, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda.
Mix well, adding a tiny splash more milk if it’s looking too dry. (Mulberries were wetter than blueberries so no extra liquid was used).
Add the fresh blueberries (mulberries) and fold in gently, to make sure you don’t crush them. (Mulberries crush!)
Transfer the mixture between muffin cases in a muffin tin.
Bake in the oven for 20 minutes until risen and an inserted skewer comes out clean. (about 90 min. in sun oven on clear, sunny, hot day).
Tastes best when fresh, but keeps covered in the fridge for up to a few days.
Butternut Squash from garden and rice for Thanksgiving (2021) prepared in solar cookers in next photo. Cork insulated solar oven from Portugal Collapsible solar reflector
Hartley and I conceived this impromptu Thanksgiving potluck the morning of and we had these meals ready to eat by 12:30. I was eager to test the newly acquired SunTaste solar oven from Portugal.
It was partly overcast and chilly that day, so those are very impressive solar cooking times.
February ’22 -Gotta’ practice cooking food in 90 min. or less for the launch of our Solar Cooker Demonstrations beginning March 20, 2022
Lentils – presoaked overnight – took too long in the round pot but cooked in 90 min. in the small roasting pan.
Grains in 90 min. or less:
Rice (pre-soaked)
Quinoa, Millet, Amaranth
Polenta with corn, coconut and okras
Gluten free foccacia – it’s more of a steamed bread and flavor of garlic topping seemed enhanced.
Beans – I’ve cooked them in the Global Sun Oven but mostly left them there all day. Will try again when sun is stronger to see if they will cook in 90 min.
8 year old Eddie learned to bake cornbread in Global Solar Oven.
Now it’s your turn! Want to see how simple it is to cook without fossil fuels? We’ll demonstrate each of the Solar cookers pictured in this blog beginning Sunday, March 20, 2022, 9:30 – 11:30 – and, if El Sol cooperates, we’ll eat what we cook, so bring your eating wares! Want to know how to sign up? Stay tuned – we’re working on it.
What didn’t work – pasta!
When asked about cooking pasta in a solar oven, the owner of Global Sun Ovens says I only made it once! I agree. Fortunately, the chickens love that gluey pasta. (they also eat grubs!!!)
Let’s resume this cliff hanger from the previous post
TA-DA! Words can’t begin to praise Kurt and Nils for how skillfully and amicably they work together. Their creation is so beautiful I don’t want to get it dirty!
Soak the earth-floor of each bin.
Finished compost left in the old hot compost system was spread on the bottom of each section and soaked to create moist conditions for composting critters.
Sort garden waste into green and brown piles, max. 1/4″ diameter & 18″ long.
Let greens dry before adding to compost because there’s enough green from kitchen scraps to make a 2:1 ratio of green to brown.
Add a layer of reedy stems – breathing tubes – if you have them.
Layer dry – brown – leaves & stems
Collect vegetarian food scraps
Add food scraps & spread them out.
Cover with another brown layer, rinse out the food bucket & add water around the pile.
If you made a mess when you added garden waste, please sweep it.
Now you have composting bragging rights. When we left off composting last year, we were processing at least 2000 lbs – 1 ton – of food scraps per year. We have more people living here now, so I bet our numbers increase.
On one of summer’s hottest days, several of us die-hard composters made a pilgramage to Cottonwood Urban Farm , one of LA Compost’s regional compost hubs. On our arrival, Elliot Kuhn pulled himself away from unloading and deploying a truckload of food scraps to give us a tour of the composting systems. Several volunteers continued his work while he explained the features of their system that made it possible to safely compost in an urban setting.
I came away with compost-system-envy and hope that we could resume composting after last years rat invasion forced us to put all our food scraps into the city’s green bins. As luck would have it, eco-villager Kyla suggested that we build a system based on the model that LA Compost built at her urban work site. A group of us met to assess the plans she had, select a site and ask community for approval.
Our enthusiastic plans were interrupted for a few months by the COVID19 outbreak that forced projects onto back-burners while we established protocols to safely shelter at home.
Eco-villager Kurt, and Kyla’s friend, Nils – who was temporarily off work – committed to the COVID social distance/ mask wearing protocols while building the system. Nils launched the action with a comprehensive materials list.
component parts
Assemble the frame
Challenges as they assemble frame. In addition to wearing mask & working 6 feet apart for COVID precautions, they are being attacked by the thorny bougainvillea, which I had trimmed to accommodate shorter people – like me.
Attach rat resistent hardware cloth to back, sides & bottom.
Move it to it’s new home site.
Add slats to facilitate turning and unloading compost.
TA-DA! Words can’t begin to praise Kurt and Nils for how skillfully and amicably they work. Their creation is so beautiful I don’t want to get it dirty!
In the next post, you’ll see that the thought of sending more food scraps to an outside composting site is a strong motivator for me, and as Kyla says, the food will add a new patina to the wood!
This L.A times article published on January 22, 2018 mentions the L.A Eco-Village. Turns out saving water also conserves energy. Sometimes efforts compound nicely.
chicken stuffed w/ lemon grass & yard long beeans, taro roots, rice pudding, zuccini bread in banana leaf wrapyard long beans
Clear skies from early morning inspired me to see how much food i could cook in the 2 sun-ovens today. 1. Heated 2 qts milk to make yogurt; 2. roasted 3 1/2 lb chicken stuffed with yard-long beans, oregano & lemon grass, resting on bed of lemon verbena & zucchini from garden ; 3. baked rice pudding (rice left-over from Chinese supper); 4. baked zucchini cornmeal “breads” wrapped in banana leaf from jimmy’s tree; 5. roasted taro roots. Between 9:30 – 4 pm.
zucchini batter: flour, cornmeal, raisins, cinnamon, nutmeg, zucchini, bp, bs, milk, ground flax seeds blended w/ water for egg sub.
This area of the courtyard gets scant sun from end of Nov., so what better time for garden construction? Motivated by recent draught and desire to conserve water, i’m experimenting with sinking the garden beds below the paths. i figure it’s like hair – if i don’t like the haircut, it’ll grow back in.
02. one of the 18″ holes at the “U” end of a bed that has just been “lasagna” composted for 12″, keeping it 6″ below the path, which is built up with some of excavated hard pan.
03. 1st layer of kitchen scraps on top of some reedy plant material – the breathing tubes. within 8 weeks, i expect these kitchen scraps to be converted to composted so il.
04. lasagna style composting kitchen scraps covered with water, soil & corrugated cardboard; repeat x 12″.
05. ready for next layer of kitchen scraps & a “worm transplant” from another active compost site. note border of nasturium transplants along outside
06. newly composted bed (right) , raised path (left). most of beds are cover-cropped with clover when they’re finished, but i decided to plant some of the bulk room fava beans adjacent to the transplanted volunteers.
07. volunteer favas, tomato & lettuce rescued from this construction site
08. fingerling potatoe patch couldn’t resist planting fingerling potatoes from george in one of the trenches. composted soil will be used to hill them up until bed is 6″ below path.
09. site for circular herb bed which will not be connected to drip irrigation. Lavenders, sages & rosemary – low water needs plants are planned.
10. Queen comfrey continues to provide leaves for comfrey fertilizer tea.
We use the recipe for Apple Pan Dowdy from my ancient Fannie Farmer cookbook.
Edy does the math to double the recipe and makes the cottage pudding topping.
Apples, raspberries and concord grapes from our gardens are baked in the solar oven with cinnamon, nutmeg & ginger and placed in the bottom of the pan.
It took about 1 1/2 hours to bake.
Edy carries his creation to the art studio opening
INGREDIENTS
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1 cup water
2 1/4 cup flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 medium apples, peeled, if desired, and sliced
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
PREPARATION
Heat the oven to 350 degrees.
Arrange the sliced apples in a greased pie pan or 9-by-9-inch baking dish. cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger
In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar well. Add the egg, and beat until smooth. In a separate mixing bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and salt, and add this to the butter-sugar-egg mix, alternating with the milk. Spoon this batter over the apple slices. Bake for about 30 minutes or until the cake is golden brown. Cool slightly before cutting.
people often ask about using the solar oven so today i decided to document roasting a whole chicken.
first, i soaked the whole chicken in a brine for 3-4 hrs (organic- Mary’s Farm, sold at Galleria. i prefer Mary’s whole chicken to her scrawny legs.).
i opened the oven to pre-heat at 10:30 am, leaving a brick in it to absorb the heat so the oven won’t bake itself before i put the food in. It was sunny & 75 degrees outside with no wind.
ingredients: 3.5 lb chicken – rinsed zest 1 lemon 4 lemon sections 1 tsp coarse sea salt 4 garlic cloves rosemary, thyme, oregano from garden 1/4 c plain yogurt.
pound garlic, cut herbs, lemon, & salt
add to yogurt; add zest.
massage the yogurt mixture inside & outside chicken. (really hard to take photos with hands covered in yogurt)
today i had sweet potatoes that needed to be cooked to i cut them in half, lengthwise, placed them in the BLACK, covered roasting pan.
potatoes made a raft for chicken. (Black cookware absorbs the heat best). Total weight of food was 7 lbs, so i knew it would take longer to cook. Could have used two ovens – but why use another pan?
by 11:15, oven was 300 degrees.
i removed the brick, put in the chicken and re-positioned the oven to capture full sun.
An hour later i repositioned the oven.
Everything was thoroughly cooked and delicious by 2:30 pm.
Pacific Electric is a full service electrical and solar contracting firm and a worker owned coop. They are having a kick off party at the L.A. Eco Village on Friday, April 25 at 6pm and you are invited.
Make sure to check out their website to get an idea of the range of services they can provide and some cool pictures of their portfolio: www.pacificelectric.coop
More info on the event:
What: Pacific electric coop kick off party. Enjoy some homemade food, locally brewed beer and cider. Music by DJ Nova Jade. Live music by Pawing at the Ceiling. Featuring locally crafted pendant lights by Melba Thorne.
When: Friday, April 25, 2014. 6pm
where: L.A Eco-Village, 117 Bimini PL, LA 90004. map
LA City Council To Vote Tomorrow, Friday December 14
On Resolution To Oppose Unsafe Restart of San Onofre
This is an issue that is near and dear to the hearts of many of us who have followed the events and on-going disasters at Fukushima.
TAKE ACTION
1. Please call your Los Angeles City Councilmember and tell them you support the Koretz/Rosendahl resolution on San Onofre safety!
To find out who your Councilmember is, go to this link: http://lacity.org/YourGovernment/CityCouncil/index.htm Go to the bottom right hand side of the page where it says “Neighborhood Resources” and type in your address.
2. Please show up at the meeting tomorrow. It is enough to stand up and be counted, when one of the speakers tells everyone in support of the resolution to stand up. If you want to speak, you will have about a minute. The most important message you can give is that you are an LA resident, you are concerned about safety, and you support the resolution. If you are not from LA, it would be most helpful to stand up and be counted, since the Councilmembers will prioritize LA constituents.
WHEN: The council meets tomorrow, Friday, December 14 at 10 a.m. at City Hall, 200 North Spring Street. Please arrive at 9:30 to have time to go through security.
WHERE: ROOM 1010, CITY HALL, 200 NORTH SPRING STREET, LOS ANGELES, CA 90012
Nisha from Local to Global Life Works made this short interview with the folks from New Frontier Family Farm during a visit with the L.A food lobby people (a local food coop/food buyers club). It’s really cool to see and hear the people that raise the things you eat. Please visit Nisha’s original post to see more pictures and get the full scoop on the visit to the farm. Thank you Nisha!
L.A. Eco-Village is repairing its cob lizard bench on Sunday 8/21
from noon to 5. If you are interested in natural building, take
this opportunity to observe and work with Ray Cirino, artist/inventor/
permaculturist, and mosaic artist, Lee Adams. Ray
will be bringing his Sparky, the dragon pizza oven to the event
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPSq9_QA4m0 so bring a pizza or pizza
toppings to enjoy from his very eco-friendly oven. AND, we'll also be
doing a partial street closing with music and dancing in the street.
Come and have fun, even if you don’t have time to help.
But if you do, here’s the help needed:
– Schlepping tables, chairs to the street and/or
– Traffic control (we will be closing off half the street) and/or
– Take a turn as pizza chef (this is really simple and training provided) and/or
– Bring acoustic musical instruments to make music in the street and/or
– Setting up shade canopies if needed and/or
– Staffing a sign-in and info table for Echo Park Time Bank and L.A. Eco-Village
Come for an hour, a few hours or the whole event. Time Dollars paid for how many hours you spend helping (for Echo Park Time Bank members http://www.echoparktimebank.com)
Note that Ray’s Dragon Pizza Oven is also available for events and parties.
Contact: Lois Arkin, 213/738-1254, crsp@igc.org
Location of event: 131 Bimini Place, LA 90004 (one block east of Vermont between First and Second Streets
Los Angeles Eco-Village 