With all this sun I've been trying to do a lot more solar cooking. The other night, I made a delicious pot of red beans cooked in coconut milk. I didn't use any exact measurements, but the general recipe is as follows:

-about 3 cups of dried red beans, soaked overnight.

-one large onion, chopped.

-2-3 tomatoes, chopped.

-curry powder and salt, to taste

-2 cans coconut milk.

Combine all ingredients and set in the solar cooker. I put mine in at about 9:00am, rotated it to follow the sun throughout the day, and it was ready for dinner about 6:00pm. Delicious!

Back to it...

I think two years is long enough to leave a blog untouched, so I'm back to blogging about my adventures in solar cooking. Each time I go to look up a recipe for solar cooking, I find the same recipes over and over (although, I did find a recipe for solar cooked termites, which easy as it sounds--spread termites onto baking sheet, put in solar cooker--I think I will pass it up.) So, my plan is to use this blog to share successful recipes with a solar cooker.

Don't have a solar cooker? You can order one, or better yet, make your own with the plans listed here.

Yesterday was our first sunny day in weeks, so i finally pulled out the cooker and made some brown rice. Not too exciting a dish, but very exciting to be cooking with the sun again!

In the sun for today: red beans cooked with coconut milk. Recipe to follow if all goes well!!

Sweet Potato

Today's cooking project was a simple sweet potato. I rubbed the rather large sweet potato with a little oil and put it in the pot around 10:00am. I took it out around 6:00pm. The pot was not hot when I went to check on it at 6:00, but the potato was fully cooked and utterly delicious!!

My new hobby

It's been about a month now that I've been using my solar cooker and I LOVE it. I am using a panel cooker from Solar Cookers International. A friend gave it to us several years ago and I just pulled it out of the closet a few weeks ago. I am using this blog to record my solar cooking adventures. Thus far, I have cooked the following things (successfully) in my solar cooker:
-brown rice
-baked apples and pears
-carrots

I have also made a few things semi-successfully
-banana bread (needed to preheat oven)
-potato and coconut stew (too cloudy)

I'll update this blog with what I make and how it goes and what I learn along the way.