on hiatus

anyone following this blog will have noticed my absence of late. this comes down to two reasons:
1) there have been very few days with suitable solar cooking weather this month and
2) i have focused my project in a different direction - creating solar cooking aid kits for those affected by natural disaster. this blog is what helped me come to that realisation, but posting became redundant a number of weeks ago.
however, i will be pulling my solar ovens back outside over the summer because i am keen to keep trying to cook with these things and in proper solar cooking weather.
so stay tuned, because the blog will be back up and running over the next few months!!
and thanks for reading :)

what an uninspiring week

The weather over the last week has been atrocious!!
The long weekend was nothing but rain rain rain. And since it's been cold with little sun or the sun hides way until the late afternoon by which point it is too late to cook and/or I'm at uni.
Hopefully the weather will improve over the next week! I have cooking projects I want to try!!

leftovers for lunch

Also on Tuesday I decided to try heating up some of last nights pasta bolognaise to eat for lunch in my solar oven.
My bowl of pasta went into the oven (with the water) at 11:20am.


15 mins in - Pasta is heating up nicely. I think in another 15 mins it will be ready to eat.

30 mins in - Pasta still needs more time. I have adjusted the angle of the reflector to get a more concentrated stream of sun. I have decided to leave the oven for half an hour in order to keep the heat inside and speed up the cooking process.

1 hour in - Pasta is nicely warmed up and ready to eat!


Yum yum yum. Pasta was at the perfect temperature and I devoured the entire bowl.

back to basics: boiling water

Boiling water is something that a lot of us do everyday in the kitchen, whether it be for making tea, cooking pasta or boiling potatoes. I thought it would be a good test of the oven to see if it could in fact boil water and how long the process would take. This took place on Tuesday morning when the sun was shining. Come back sun!!

11:20am I placed a (black) mug of cold water in the oven. It is very warm and sunny however I am a little worried about the breeze blowing. It is messing with the reflector a little bit.


15 mins in - Water is still cold but the mug is heating up.

30 mins in - Tea is now warming up. I have adjusted the angle of the reflector to get some stronger heat. I am going to leave the oven for half an hour before opening it again as I want to keep to heat inside. Continuous opening is lessening the sun's effect.

1 hour in - The water seems to be getting close to boiling.. Heat bubbles can be seen on the bottom and sides of the mug.

1 1/2 hours in - The reflector keeps getting pushed around by the breeze because of the direction it is blowing so have decided to just take the mug out. I almost burnt my fingers lifting the mug out of the oven. The water has not quite hit boiling point but it sure is scalding!! My pinky finger was not so happy to have been thrust so carelessly into the fiery water.

According to 'Solar Cookers International' (and organisation I have been researching that does a lot of work to provide solar ovens in poorer countries such as Haiti) water heated to 65°C for a short period of time is free from microbes, including E. coli, Rotaviruses, Giardia and the Hepatitis A virus. Their ability to pasteurise water and kill disease-causing organisms is one of the main benefits of providing access to solar ovens overseas.
I need to get a thermometer I can stick in the water and do this again and measure the result more accurately.

the bacon experiment

I've been a bit lazy in getting this post up. Decided Sunday morning while the sun was blazing not only to cook out on the front porch a bit later in the morning but to pin the 2 ovens against each other in a bacon cookoff.
Started the bacon off in the ovens at 12:30pm.


15 mins in - Ovens are heating up (there is a lot of heat fog in oven B - the big box oven). Bacon may be ever so slightly starting to cook.


30 mins in - Bacon is making some progress! Oven B seems to be cooking the bacon faster.


45 mins in - Both pieces of bacon are looking good. The one in oven B has curled up along the fat lines which is a positive sign.


1 hour in - Bacon is looking pretty good so I have decided to take them out and see how they compare.


Oven A (pizza box oven) has produced a more smoky looking bacon but oven B has definitely done a better cooking job. Upon opening up that oven a huge amount of heat could be felt and the frying pan was so hot I had to wear an oven mitt in order to take it out of the oven!

the freaky pancake

Thought I would test a pancake this morning also in my other oven using some leftover waffle mixture i have in my fridge. I will definitely not be trying this one if it works as I made the waffle mix last tuesday.. But worth a test! Chucked it in at 10am.


15 mins in - No change to pancake mix but oven is heating up.

30 mins in - Pancake is starting to cook in small areas. Moved the oven to better sun.


1 hour in - Pancake is slightly more cooked but still looking pretty damn feral. I think I should try it again but with proper nice fresh batter instead of gross week-old batter.


1 1/2 hours in - I have given up on the pancake as it is super feral and I have to go to uni.



Turns out that the lighter part that I thought was cooked was in fact squishy and gross when I poked it and the darker batter was more cooked and firm. There was also a fair bit of water in the pan from dripping condensation on the plastic. For the future I maybe need to wipe this off along the way??
I think I will try this again on the weekend with proper batter.

tea for 3

Now that I have my new hardcore solar oven I am super keen to use it! So I have set up 3 cups of tea (one for me, one for my sister and one for my brother) in my oven. Very glad the two of them are around the house this morning and willing to sample my solar tea. At 10am I filled up each mug with cold water and stuck the tea in. In my black mug I have a herbal strawberry teabag, in my sisters blue mug I have some T2 leaves in a strainer and in my brothers stripey mug i have a back russian caravan teabag.


15 mins in - Oven is heating up nicely.

30 mins in - The tea is feeling luke warm. I have agitated the teabags/strainer to help infuse the flavour. I moved the oven to better sun.

You can also see here the pancake i have cooking simultaneously in my other oven. Blog post is to follow.

1 hour in - Tea is ready!!

My brother, sister and I sat down to try our varying teas..

Neither my brother nor my sister were particularly impressed with their tea (this was partly me fault - the tea was not hot enough. As a non tea drinker I thought it was ok and I think I was a bit too excited). However I thought mine tasted ok and they both agreed after tasting it. From this we have concluded that perhaps herbal tea bags are most suited to the solar oven over the black teabags and loose leaf herbal tea. I think I will test this theory again over the weekend to see if it holds.
They also suggested that perhaps the strange taste came from the fact that the tea bags had been soaking in the water the entire time. So perhaps I will also test a mug without the tea bag and add it in once the water is hot enough as one normally would when making tea.