Solar Oven Madness

I've been doing a solar oven demonstrations at a few different events around town over the past year or two--baking something in the oven and giving away free samples and then answering questions about solar ovens. But today I participated in the biggest demonstration yet.

Ajo celebrates International Day of Peace in a big way. It's one of the biggest celebrations of the year here. This morning was the kick-off celebration with a free community breakfast in the Plaza put on by the International Sonoran Desert Alliance (ISDA) in conjunction with our local grocery store. Nina, our CSA coordinator, organized this grand solar oven demonstration for the event with her usual flair.

Yesterday, I made a couple of batches of Mesquite Sweet Potato Bread so we would have samples available before the first batches came out of our ovens this morning. We also handed out information about mesquite flour and our CSA. (The whole wheat flour and the sweet potatoes came from Crooked Sky Farms, who supply our CSA.) During the course of the morning we gave away over 20 batches of Mesquite Sweet Potato cookies and 4 batches of Mesquite sweet potato sweetbread. Nina wrote an excellent article about the event here.

Besides the commercially made SunOven I brought, we used a home-made solar oven constructed for ISDA by Sue Reiman and later in the day Aaron Cooper brought four solar ovens, created by his high school students at San Simon School. These were simply a wide squarish funnel created out of cardboard covered with tin foil and then propped up to catch the sun. The cookies were baked in oven bags in aluminum foil pans. This worked surprisingly well and opens up the possiblity of designing a simple oven using a wide reflector and using--and reusing hopefully--oven bags to cook in.

The oven on the farthest left is our solar oven, a comercially made Sun Oven, available at http://www.sunoven.com/ and many other places. After having cooked in this oven for over three years, I can recommend it. It cooks well and is very portable and easy to use. The biggest drawback is its size. It barely fits a 9"x13" pan, if it has any handles forget it, and definately cannot fit a cookie sheet.

Anne Ashton Goldfeld of a Phoenix area Roots & Shoots program (they've created a community garden with the children) and AZ Homegrown Solutions is also the area's solar oven queen. She prefers the Sport from Solar Oven Society. I haven't used this oven yet but I think if I were to buy an oven now I would choose this one.

It comes with or without the optional reflector and you can save $25 by buying two. Also included are 2 pots, thermometer, WAPI (water pasteurization indicator) and instruction manual (.pdf)

Here's some information from their website.

The SOS Sport oven cooks food of all types, and also pasteurizes water. The casing is rugged recycled plastic (post consumer soft drink bottles) and the insulation; closed cell foam insulation that does not absorb moisture. The lid is a double layer with dead air space to enhances insulating qualities. It holds two 10-inch pots (3 quarts each) and the floor dimensions of the oven (for cookie sheets, etc,) are 9 1/4 inches x 17 1/2 inches. It reaches temperatures of 300 Degrees Fahrenheit in equatorial regions and includes an optional detachable reflector to lengthen the cooking seasons in areas further north. Here in Minnesota, the cooker works great without reflectors April-September and with reflectors it works well all winter long (when there is sun!).
It is light weight – 10 pounds and stable (normal winds cause no problems)

If you want to order a Sun Oven or a SOS Sport online please use the Resources for Health vender ID to help Anne's groups. For Sun Oven enter the code RES HEALTH 09 for $25 off your purchase and they also send $25 to Resources of Health. For the Sport, the number is #2371.