Your Guide To Green

I've used a solar oven now for two decades, and there was one year of my life when a solar oven was the only real way I had to cook my food. I could use my fireplace, but even in the winter, the fireplace wasn't nearly as easy. It needed constant tending, and it coated my shiny steel cookware solid black with soot.

I'm back in the city now, but when I moved to the country in 1994 and began using my solar oven every day, I realized how lovely it is to go outside to turn the oven. I worked at my computer all day and watched nature through my windows, and if it weren't for that oven, the habits of a lifetime could have kept that window between nature and me. But solar cooking saved me. It "forced" me outside, and so I went.

First, I noticed the clouds. Were they moving this way and might slow down my cooking? Or would they pass me by? And look at that raven flying with the hawks!

I noticed the heat; I noticed the wind - powerful where I was on the western side of the Chiricahua Mountains. Time to set a chair beside the oven so a dust devil doesn't try to tip it over. The vultures are rising this morning. And phoebes are making their nests again in the eaves. The day - the sunshine - feels wonderful.

So different than standing before a stove!

The solar oven forced me to take regular small breaks in my workday - something I'd known for years I needed to do and had even been counseled about, but just couldn't do. My German work ethic was too strong to allow such "decadent behavior. What hundreds of dollars of therapy couldn't accomplish, my solar oven did: it attracted me with its practicality, then drew me outside so the day could whisper its seductions: Isn't the sunshine lovely on the skin? Wouldn't it be nice to sit for a spell in the sun and close your eyes? Just a moment…. And I did. Then I returned to my work peaceful and satisfied. Nature cares for us, and I'm even learning how to care for myself a little better.

Speaking of decadence , not only was I taking breaks and going outside, I was experiencing food tastes in a whole new way. Have you ever eaten a sweet potato cooked to a caramelized mush in the sun? It needs nothing to enhance it. I discovered this one day, when I didn't want to go back inside quite yet to get the salt, butter, plate and fork. It was a lovely winter afternoon, one of those warm ones so common in the southwest. I sat in the sun in a chair and gingerly peeled one end of the orange tuber held in my potholder, while looking across the mesquites to the oaks where I could see a single hawk sitting sentry. I took a bite of a very sweet potato, dazed and delighted.

Some people theorize that solar energy affects the cellular structure of food in a way that electric and gas heat simply cannot – and I believe they're right. Decades of solar meals confirm this for me: the food simply tastes better. One day, perhaps we'll have scientific research to explain exactly why, but I'm satisfied that it's true.

Solar ovens are also forgiving. One day, I was so focused on some project that I entirely forgot the casserole dish filled with simple rice and water that I'd put in the oven – four hours earlier. If I'd put it on the stove, I'd have burned it up. I ran outdoors and found my oven was no longer directed at the sun, but it was still over two-hundred degrees (they go to 350 or even 400), the rice was cooked, and moist as if it were being perfectly cared for in a steam tray.

Solar ovens are designed to hold in all the heat they gain, and by necessity they also hold in moisture. So, rice stays moist, meat stays juicy, and pizza crust doesn't dry out but bakes to a chewy, soft perfection.

Solar cooking can save a lot of money. In the summertime, most people not only pay for gas or electricity to cook with, but then they pay again to reduce the heat created in the kitchen. Solar ovens also can be used for canning – and it's generally summertime when food is available to can, but with solar cooking you can simply take it outside and avoid heating up the whole house.

In the wintertime, the gains are admittedly fewer, but they still exist. For instance, the excess heat we generate in cold seasons in the kitchen is appreciated, and might offset a bit of furnace heat. However, if we run an exhaust fan to vent cooking odors outside, we also exhaust a great deal of warmth with it, possibly more than was created by our cooking.

As for cooking during the winter, I still remember my first New Mexico solar oven workshop. It was in February and on my fliers I printed, “Call for alternate date in case of bad weather.” Surprisingly a half–dozen intrepid folks showed up anyway, to sit outside on a near-freezing day. We were huddled together watching my ovens face nothing but clouds so thick we could only guess approximately where the sun might be behind them. Nevertheless, I aimed them as best I could, and we talked about solar design and cooking while watching the thermometer rise ever so slowly. The temperature never got high enough for cooking (170 degrees), only to about 105, but that was impressive, since we had no direct sun.

If I'd started a dish indoors, say, in a cast iron pot that would hold significant heat in its mass (as I often do on winter days), the oven could have held that heat and the food would have certainly cooked – but I hadn't started any dish inside, never believing anyone would come out on a day like that! So on those cloudy days simply start your dish inside then the sun oven can easily finish it up.

In addition these ovens also can sterilize water - not purify it, as it has no means of removing toxins - but bacteria and other living organisms can be killed, so that water can be made much safer to drink.

For this reason, a lot of people consider a solar oven to be an essential survival item. Occasionally it has been a fleeting goal of mine to prepare for survival situations, but today I'm less concerned about personal self-sufficiency than I am about community sufficiency .

I generally ignore all the media talk about terrorist acts except to acknowledge that we as a culture are terrifically dependent on a vulnerable infrastructure that delivers us all our most basic needs – food, clean water and energy for warmth. In the event this infrastructure gets broken in any manner, nearly every one of us would be hard-pressed to take care of these needs.

It's commonly known that our supermarkets only contain three days of food at any given time. Considering the example of New Orleans in its time of disaster, I learned that I can't put much faith in outside sources for help. So what can we do in our communities to plan for our “hometown security?”

Every garden is a good first step. Every green house. Every rain barrel. Every sunroom. And every solar oven gives me hope that our little town will be that much more friendly, more cooperative and more community minded if anything should ever force us to face our vulnerability to simple cold and hunger.

As soon as I had my first solar oven, it inspired me to build something to help heat my family's water. We eventually built a solar water heater that became a pre-heater for the standard water heater in our home. This saved us heating dollars while giving us dependable hot water for a family with teenagers at any time of day.

That success led me to design a solar home - a hermitage in the country. My little straw bale abode was designed with the same elements as an oven, only slightly different: it had huge south-facing windows, plenty of thermal mass in: the floor, the stuccoed window seats, and the brick fireplace hearth. It also had wonderful insulation in the R-60 straw walls.

And the inspiration all began with a simple solar oven. They cook! They save money! The food never burns, and it often tastes better. They draw us out to sit quietly for precious moments in the sun - speaking of which, I think I'll go outside now, put something in my solar oven, and catch a few rays on this lovely day.