Soakin' Up the Sun

Today I tried making a Windshield Shade Solar Cooker.

It was pretty easy to put together
with things I already had at home:

• reflective windshield shade
• large binder clip
• empty 5-gallon bucket
• empty smaller bucket
• clear pyrex bowl
• brown-tinted glass casserole dish with lid

I used the smaller bucket
(my "weeding bucket" - please excuse the dirt)
inside the 5-gallon bucket
to keep my clear pyrex bowl in place.

To test the temperature of my solar oven I filled my brown-tinted glass bowl with water about 2/3 full and covered it with the lid. The water temperature was 76.5 degrees F. when I began at 1:45 pm.

Here are my results:
1:45 pm - 76.5 degrees F. (began cooking)
2:45 pm - 120 degrees F. (intermittent cloud cover)
3:45 pm - 133.3 degrees F. (left for a soccer game)
6:30 pm - 106.5 degrees F. (area shaded when I returned)

Solar Cooker at Cantinawest has some great information if you'd like to learn more about solar cooking. Here's what they have to say about the best time to use a solar cooker:

"The most ideal time of the day for cooking in a solar cooker is between the hours of 9:00 AM and 4:00 PM, this being possible in the summer time when the sun is directly overhead for a longer period of the day.In the middle of Winter your "ideal" time will be reduced to between roughly 11:30 to 2:30 PM."

They also have some solar cooker recipes on their website that sound good.

So, there you go. It was kinda fun. I'll try, try again -- getting an earlier start in the day next time. :)

Windshield Shade Solar Cooker

Would you believe you could "bake breads, granola, brownies, lasagna, all sorts of vegetables, and to purify water" with a reflective accordion-folding car sunshade and a few other simple supplies?

"Kathy Dahl-Bredine developed the Windshield Shade Solar Funnel Cooker while experimenting with various designs of cookers to introduce in the indigenous communities where Kathy lives and works in southern Mexico. She hit upon an utterly simple way to make an instant portable solar oven. Taking a reflective accordion-folded car windshield shade, you can turn it into a version of the solar funnel simply by attaching little Velcro tabs along the long notched side. Here’s how:"

(Source: http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/Windshield_Shade_Solar_Cooker)

Also worth checking out is a post entitled "How to Make an Easy Solar Cooker...with materials you probably already have at home" by Our Twenty Minute Kitchen Garden. This looks so easy! I'm going to give it a try.