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.
I was introduced to this Tromboncino heirloom squash at the Hollywood Farmer’s Market. It reminded my so much of a sleeping cat that I had to buy one. That resemblance made it harder to slice!
I’m making chicken soup, a comfort food for my visit with my Aunt Annie tomorrow. She’s 105 years old, lives alone in an area west of San Diego and mostly looks after herself. This visit was originally scheduled to celebrate her recent birthday, but, her last son died last week, our visit is just to be together. This soup has to be special because it may be our last meal together.
Yesterday, in the solar cookers, I made chicken broth with lemongrass (from garden) and wakami (not from garden), roasted chicken livers (for auntie and the cat), and roasted carrots. Today I roasted the skinny part of Tromboncino on a bed of onions with a little turmeric and cumin seeds, and made chicken bone broth. It was fun to have all of those cookers working at one time. I’ve been usurping any piece of furniture around here that will hold a cooker! Ideally, I’d like help to put wheels on a few for the heavier ovens.
Today I added the ramen noodles (millet/ brown rice) that we now stock in the bulk room.
I also experimented with peanut butter, almond meal, date cookies, (lower left). That’s it- just 3 gf, vegan ingredients! I plan to bake them again at the Saturday solar cooker workshop – and sneak in a little sweetener.
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.
Why demonstrate a few puny worms munching on food scraps when we’re going to show off our 3 bin hot composting system?
Because building a DIY worm bin from discarded material aligns with 3 of our Core Values:
Celebrate and include joy in all our endeavors. I feel a rush of joy when resources “magically” appear after I envision a project. And I enjoy the magical transmutation of food scraps into rich humus.
Take responsibility for each other and the planet through local environmental and social action.
It doesn’t get much more local than plunking your food waste into your own worm bin
a DIY worm bin is pretty cheap, and
easier to fit into small spaces – indoors or out – than a large composting system.
Learn from nature and live ecologically. (Worms help us) gain a better appreciation of the intricate balance and interdependencies in nature…inviting us to tread more gently upon the Earth, says Mary Applehof, Worms Eat My Garbage.
Gather discarded materialWorm BuffetWorm bin covered with shade cloth in shade of orange & papaya treesWorm bin on blocks = instant sun shade for Taurine, LA Eco-village hardworking cat.
While Sunflower seed heads look raggedy at the end of their season, birds and squirrels feast on them.
Nasturtiums often harbor aphids at the end of their season so I harvest them when they start to die back.
Pickled, nasturtium seeds taste like capers.
1 pint Nasturtium seeds – let them dry a few days
1 pint white vinegar
2 bay leaves (from bay bushes in front of Terraces)
1 tsp. sea salt
Peppercorns (optional)
Boil vinegar, bay leaves, salt & pepper. (This year I boiled vinegar in sun oven). Cool. Pack seeds into clean pint jar & pour cooled vinegar mixture over them. Store several weeks before using them.
Pizza topping: combined with crushed garlic and oil.
Nettles – the plant you love to hate!
Nettle seeds drop off dried plant
If you’re not dressed for success – long sleeves, socks, long pants and gloves – you may be painfully introduced to nettles. I try to keep them pruned from paths, and let them grow in less traveled areas. Young plants are among the earliest greens to emerge and I enjoy adding them to soups, so I let them re-seed themselves. They can be used to make fertilizer and they help composted material break down. Chickens and other birds are said to deworm themselves by eating nettle seeds. Fibers from nettle plants are used for making rope and are spun into a silky fiber. (Who knows when we may need to harvest nettle fibers?).
Shameless Commerce Division
Sage & Springer, Solar cooker and Garden guides, invite you to explore the water-wise, integrated vegetable and flower gardens, with over fifty fruit trees in our eco-village urban oasis. We’ll demonstrate various composting methods and offer optional composting participation. When the walk-about concludes, we invite you to socialize with us over a solar baked snack and garden-herb tea.Eventbrite tickets
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!
applied tanglefoot to all fruit trees: the initial application several months ago has worn off or attracted so much dirt it needed to be re-applied. We’ve observed much smaller aphid infestations since the initial application has reduced the ability of ants to protect the aphids & increased the possibility for natural aphid predators (ladybugs) to control the aphids with out being bitten by ants.
cleaned out greywater outlets for 105 & 106 and discovered that 104 has been disconnected. Most of the outlets were buries & required considerable excavation to find the.
there is a proposal to make higher covers for the outlets to they are a few inches above ground level for outlets that are not in pathways.
scheduled garden work parties are 3rd sat. of each month with spontaneous acts of gardening in between.
meetings happen when there’s something needs discussion.
We thinned out so many fully grown banana plants that I thought they would overwhelm our compost systems. Reluctantly I gave the order, Prepare them for the green bins!
Bagged banana plants
Fortunately, the green bins were full, so every time I passed the bags of plants, I sensed their plea: Don’t sent us away. We’ll help the compost. We’re full of water.
Water leaked from banana plants through the hole in the wheelbarrow until I positioned it over the compost.
And so they changed my mind. I’m chopping them up and adding them to the bottom 2 layers of both the in-ground-lasagna-style compost and the hot compost.
Water thrifty plants get “high” on 2017’s lusty rainfall.
YAY! After thinning out banana suckers and composting, two trees promise bananas.
We’re trellising some thorny plants along the fence to deter fence-climbing.
Pedestrians from many cultures stop to ask about plants and talk about the gardens they have or used to have in their native countries. Along the fence I like to plant crops – like these peas – plus herbs and flowers that they can harvest from the sidewalk.
In the courtyard
Newly mulched path will help to conserve moisture – make the effects of this rain last longer – and eventually break down to feed the soil.
Draught tolerant plants added to “small fruit” garden. Experimenting with clover as a living mulch
Jujube
prickly pear
Goji berries & weeping mulberry and their new signs.
Parsley and lettuce are easily accessible for community to harvest.
Yolanda has planted papayas next to greywater outlets.
Lower level
potatoes & fava beans planted around olla to slowly water plants during dry season.
Papaya, banana and new grape vine against south facing wall will also help shade this apartment.
attending : shaila, sarah, samantha, carrie, dani, yolanda, bambi, jocelyn, lara, carol jessica, ely; cameo: bruce
succulent garden : samantha researched plants that might be suitable for the dry area next to loquat tree in front and possibly in the bulb-out raised bed. Contestants were: yucca, ornamental grass, indian mallow. we choose mallow which is perennial, blooms year round and has orange flowers. as a member of mallow family, may also be medicinal. samantha will check for sources.
clean chicken coop & prune adjacent lamb’s quarters & lemon verbena bambi & jocelyn overcame anxiety about not knowing what to do by expertly hauling bedding from chicken coop to compost and pruning around the coop entry path.
transplant goji berry from sandbox dani and yolanda located a good site for the goji berry & dug & prepared a hole for it’s new digs. Unfortunately, the goji berry had been cut down, but it’s roots were still in the sandbox, so they have been re-located to the bed with banana & papaya trees fed by greywater.
prune apple, pomegranate trees & wooly aphids shaila, sarah & carol pruned & carol and yolanda continued on sunday. Jessica researched the wooly white growths on the trees & diagnosed “wooly aphids”. carol’s wooly aphids control plan spray with 1 TBSP dish soap dissolved in hot water. [1]
Pruning-at-large lara pruned plants surrounding entry to her apartment. Carrie pruned where needed.
After party sweet & juicy pomegranates from our pruning, and cold, sweet watermelon brought by bambi were our rewards while we chatted in the courtyard after working. Many of us went from there to sea dragon for supper & more lively conversations.
Pruned chayote to its main stem today. Can you see that some of them have started to grow? New Year’s resolution : don’t let new grow extend more than 10 feet from vine. It seems to be putting a lot of it’s energy into making vines & leaves.
I know there’s 5 more days until the new moon, but it’s really raining today, so i plugged some sweet peas & austrian field peas in the ground. (probably should NOT have soaked them overnight, but when rain is predicted here, the drops can usually be counted, so i hope pre-soaking wasn’t overkill for today’s conditions. ) Will keep you posted in 2-4 weeks.
Meanwhile, Angelinos, enjoy the moisture. on your dry skin.
all from a plot that gets no direct sun between Nov to Feb! I harvested about 15 lbs of sweet potatoes from 3 plants. I’m amazed that they grow in the shade and seem to mature in cool temperatures. They don’t seem to need much water.
Their flowers were blooming Oct – Dec.
Check out the personality of this 4 pounder! You can see that gramma is happy about it too!
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.
I was letting these plants grow under the courtyard fig tree. They had interesting foliage & tiny daisy type flowers – until – the flowers turned into a burr that disperses it’s seed on a sharp barb – porcupine style. Now I’m encouraging everyone to pull it out & dispose of it in the green bin. Anyone know it’s name?
Even though I do this several times a week, setting the conditions for kitchen waste to become fertile soil is still the most amazing transformation.
Jonas finishes this compost pit with a layer of soil.
We planted nightshades: tomatoes, peppers, tomatillos here last year, and it was cover-cropped with clover during the winter. After another round of cover crops, how about some corn? Will we get enough light? Not the best exposure, but let’s experiment
compost cover-cropped with flax & buckwheat
Now that I think about growing corn, i think i’ll toss in some lentils to boast the nitrogen in this cover-crop mix. I’m using “seeds” that we stock in the food lobby bulk room.
I imagined a decadent scene: a Nasturtium riot spilling onto sidewalk and into the street. Irma and I had to curb their enthusiasm ’cause they were crowding out the neighbor-ladies seats.
Los Angeles Eco-Village 