Search Results for: label/solar cooking/page/7/2011/04/making-it

470 results

Summer of Solar Cookin’

Homegrown Neighbor
Solar
11 Comments
Homegrown Neighbor here: I was lucky to recently receive a really nice solar cooker from a family friend. Apparently it had been sitting in her garage for a while, and I was happy to take it off of her hands. The model is called an SOS Sport. It is a box style cooker with a black interior and clear, insulated lid. It also has a removable reflector to help concentrate the light in the box. The reflector is helpful, but I̵7;ve seen the tempe...

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A Parvati Solar Cooker

Mr. Homegrown
Solar
4 Comments
Damn, is solar cooking easy! Put some rice in a pot, place the pot in this simple panel cooker, made with cardboard and aluminum foil, stick it out in the sun and two hours later you have lunch. We built our “Parvati” solar cooker with plans designed by Shobha Ravindra Pardeshi that can be found here. Pardeshi, who runs an “appropriate technology” company with her husband in India has another design for a similar dish-sha...

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How To Dry Food With the Sun

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Food Preservation, How-to, Preparedness, Solar
5 Comments
. But there̵7;s a catch to sun drying: humidity. Food dries best when temperatures are above 85º F and below 60% humidity. If you live in a desert, humidity isn̵7;t a problem. But in most other places in North America it̵7;s simply too moist to set food out under the sun. It will rot before it dries. In Los Angeles, due to the influence of the ocean, it̵7;s slightly too humid most of the year for sun drying to work well. But there...

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The Sundiner–A Groovy 1960s Era Solar Cooker

Mr. Homegrown
Appropriate Technology, Solar, Water and Power
5 Comments
Backywards beekeeper Dennis of The Buzz in the Dale, was nice enough to gift me his vintage Sundiner solar cooker that he found at a garage sale a few years ago. Resembling a cross between a portable 1960s record player and a satellite, the Sundiner is compact, light and easy to carry. A built in thermometer lets you know when you have hit cooking temperatures. The unit is so efficient, that when I set it up at noon it hit 350° F within minut...

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Camping and Solar Cooking

Mr. Homegrown
Bikes, Solar
7 Comments
...cargo bike (the amazing Xtracycle) and biking to our destination, all the while carrying almost as much as we would car camping. After rolling into our campground, we’ll spend the weekend kicking back at the campsite, taking it easy and pretty much not going anywhere or doing anything. With the carrying capacity of the cargo bike, we can get fancy with the food and libations, allowing us to skip the usual dehydrated camping chow. These sittin’ a...

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Build a Solar Dehydrator

Mr. Homegrown
Appropriate Technology, Preparedness, Solar
18 Comments
Like many of you, I suspect, we̵7;ve got a few too many tomatoes at this time of the year. One of our favorite ways to preserve our modest harvest is with our solar dehydrator. There̵7;s nothing like the taste of sun dried tomatoes, but unless you live in a very dry desert climate like Phoenix, Arizona you can̵7;t just set fruit out in the sun and expect it to do anything but go moldy. In most places in the world, including here in...

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Remember to Label Those Jars!

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Food Preservation
10 Comments
e no idea. They were probably the result of some late night canning frenzy two years ago. At the time I probably thought to myself, “I̵7;ll label them in the morning.” Not only should the jars be labeled, but it would also have been nice to have some notes on the recipe I used and where the fruit was sourced from. To this end I̵7;ve started a preservation diary in a useful program called Evernote. Perhaps I should get a tatto...

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Another Panel Solar Cooker

Mr. Homegrown
Solar
3 Comments
Poyourow demoing her solar cooker design There̵7;s no one size fits all solution when it comes to the world of solar panel cookers. All have their advantages and disadvantages. I got an email from author Joanne Poyourow, leader of the amazing Los Angeles Environmental Change Makers, with a simple and effective design she came up with. Pouyourow̵7;s cooker comes together much faster than the CooKit design that I blogged about earlier th...

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Solar Light Hack

Mr. Homegrown
Design
10 Comments
We wanted a solar powered light over our new entrance arbor. The problem is that most of the lights available are just plain ugly. And the solar panels on the cheaper models are usually mounted on the light itself making it impossible to place them in a shady spot. I came up with a simple solution. First, I bought an inexpensive solar light intended to be mounted on a fence. I took it apart and desoldered the LEDs off the circuit board. Nex...

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CooKit Solar Panel Cooker

Mr. Homegrown
Solar
14 Comments
I̵7;ve been experimenting with a nice panel solar cooker for the past week and, so far, the results are impressive. Called the CooKit, it was developed in 1994 by a group of engineers and solar cooking enthusiasts associated with Solar Cookers International and based on a design by Roger Bernard. It has a couple of nice features: It produces ample heat to cook rice and simple casseroles. When you fold it up it takes up no more space than a...

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