Solar Cooking – Catching the Spark

Posted by txazlady on September 27, 2009 · 1 Comment 

I became interested in solar cooking – or at least the idea of solar cooking – quite a few years ago.  Time passed and I was always too busy to get past the “just thinking about it” stage.  Until last year.

We were doing craft shows every Saturday last year — outside and usually in the sun.  And week after week, as I ate my lunch, I always thought how nice it would be to have a hot, home cooked lunch.  This summer, as I was preparing for this fall’s craft shows, I decided to investigate solar cooking.  WOW! Was I surprised!  Not only was it not a new idea, it is a very old idea.  Apparently this is a very popular cooking method around the world.  But I had never heard of it.

I decided that if native women around the world were smart enough to do — then I was smart enough to do it too!  There was just one little problem — getting Papa’s help to make a solar oven.  There were lots of plans on the internet – some big, some small..  But he was too busy getting ready for the fall shows and he just wasn’t sold on the idea.

At this point, I wasn’t ready or willing to invest in a commercial product.

So finally I found a very, very simple plan to make a reflective oven out of just a silver windshield shade. This was my first solar oven.

The first meal I cooked was just a very simple lunch.  I heated hot dogs in chili.  Papa was really impressed with just this simple little lunch and has now joined me  in my Solar Cooking Adventure.

I started this blog so that you could share the adventure.