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.
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.
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.
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.
I was honored and delighted to have a personal meeting with the Mayor this week. The Mayor goes way back with LAEV to before he became our Councilman, and we only owned one property instead of four. So it’s always a delight to see how far both he and LAEV have come in the past dozen years or so. I asked if we could take a photo, so I could have bragging rights when he’s our President some day.
Here a few of the topics we got to talk about, each of which the Mayor was supportive of. Still a ways to go on advocacy work. But with the help of the “less cars” folks, the permaculture folks, Teresa Baker and her LATCH Collective, Hans Johnson leading the Styrofoam ban, and LAUSD Superintendent Michelle King, and, of course, the passionate folks who live in/at the Los Angeles Eco-Village, it’s all within reach!
Return the original intent of AB 744 for car-free affordable housing
Mayor Garcetti and Lois
developments near transit. The City watered this bill down so that developers couldn’t go less than 0.5 spaces per unit. LAEV could demonstrate this for our future developments.
Tiny House Villages, legalize them, even on wheels.
Hillside terracing, using permaculture techniques for catching rainwater.
Joint City/LAUSD use of playgrounds during off-school hours
Styrofoam ban. Let’s do it.
Vision Zero. A few additional ideas.
Potholes and buses. Best cost/benefits.
Let me know if you want a copy of what I recommended about these items.
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.
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!
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.
Visitors to the ecovillage are encouraged to help with our projects.
ernesto (visitor) and irma (member) dug holes for potatoes in composted lower level site. Potatoes will alternate with sunflowers for an interesting visual, and clover cover-crops will protect the ground while everything is growing.
ellary planting fingerling potatoes (donated by george
ernesto practiced hilling potatoes using un- composted straw from the hot compost bins. the large leaf pale green (fuzzy) plant is mullein. It will send up a stalk with yellow flowers that bees love
bulb out garden on Bimini. revived by carol and irma last year; maintained by visitors: ellary, daniel, carla supervised by carol and watered by shaila.
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.
Los Angeles Eco-Village 