source: LYNN O'DELL for LA Times
http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-000071623sep05.story
September 5 2001
It's a hot summer afternoon in energy-parched California, but that's not stopping
Eleanor Shimeall from baking a cake, even in Borrego Springs. Up north, in
sun-drenched Davis, Rick Palkovic is cooking sweet corn. And as the Southland
simmers, Doug Edwards coolly lifts a loaf of homemade beer bread from his oven
in Cerritos.
These cooks aren't worried about heating up their kitchens, nor does the threat
of rolling blackouts faze them. They are solar cooks, and although their numbers
may
be few, their ovens are fired by a force mightier than the power company: Old
Sol himself.
Solar cooking has been around since at least 1767, when Swiss naturalist Horace
de Saussure tapped the sun's rays to cook fruit in an experiment. Today groups
such as Rotary International tout its use in developing countries where firewood
and clean water are scarce. And, of course, science teachers and environmentalists
love it. While solar cooking has not exactly settled into the mainstream, the
hard-core insist that California's energy crunch could change that.
When a local paper did a story on solar cooking recently, the Sacramento office
of Solar Cookers International
sold out of solar cookbooks, cooking pots and the
fold-up "CooKit" solar panel cooker that SCI invented. The group,
co-founded by Shimeall and her husband, Clark, is a major proponent of the use
of the process
in developing nations and a global clearinghouse for solar cooking.
"I think people are looking for any idea that will save energy, and this
has a big potential to do that," says Lorraine Anderson, an environmentalist
and coauthor with
Palkovic of a solar cookbook, "Cooking With Sunshine" ($12), sold
through SCI. "You not only save on the cost of using the stove, but you're
not heating up your
house, so you save on air-conditioning costs."
Just by solar cooking on weekends and holidays with his portable outdoor oven,
Jim Arwood of Phoenix calculates that his family shaves about $40 from their
electric bill over the summer.
There's also a big "wow!" factor. Picture this: You put food in a box in your backyard in the morning; you return at the end of the day and dinner's done.
"This is the most fantastic thing!" Shimeall recalls saying when
she saw a solar box cooker demonstration at a League of Women Voters meeting
in Stockton 20
years ago. Immediately hooked, she paid $50 for a cardboard cooker and has since
prepared everything from whole turkeys to ice cream, solar-style.
Along the way, she wrote "Eleanor's Solar Cookbook"($10), with proceeds
going to SCI. (Many in the movement are evangelical about solar cooking, and
it
sometimes seems that everyone has either a Web site or a cookbook.)
Today, Shimeall cooks daily using a 14-year-old box cooker on wheels she keeps
on the edge of the veranda. Sometimes she has four pots going in the outdoor
oven; sometimes it's just a hard-boiled egg for an egg salad sandwich. Palkovic
and Edwards also use their solar ovens daily in the solar season, which runs
from
March to October in Northern California cities such as Davis, but is pretty
much year-round in Southern California.
They'd have more company if people realized how easy solar cooking is, they insist.
You can solar cook just about anywhere in the U.S. except Alaska, Palkovic
says. Altitude has nothing to do with it; it's strictly a matter of latitude.
If you live
between 60 degrees north latitude and 60 degrees south latitude, you can solar
cook. The closer you are to the equator, the more solar cooking days you have.
But what nature giveth, nature taketh away. Clouds, puffy or otherwise, are
the bane of solar cooking. They reduce solar energy and increase cooking time.
A really
cloudy day can drive a solar chef right back into the kitchen. Enthusiasts,
however, say they don't mind. They are still saving energy in the long run.
"Most people are kind of reluctant to fool with this because they think
there's a trick to it, but it's the easiest thing in the world," says Edwards,
who promotes
solar
cooking . He has built a dozen homemade solar cookers and uses a commercially
made solar oven as well.
To get started, you need a spot in a backyard or on the patio that gets at
least four hours of sunlight a day. You can make your own solar oven--which
should face
south--of cardboard boxes or plywood and a bit of glass, aluminum foil and glue;
buy a $20 CooKit, which reflects sunlight into a dark pot enclosed in a clear
plastic bag; or buy a commercially made sun oven for about $250.
There's even a built-in version where the oven sticks out of the house like
a window box and the cook has indoor access. The Kerr-Cole
Sustainable Living Center
in Taylor, Ariz., has construction plans for the built-in on its Web site.
For cooking, you need black pots to absorb direct and reflected sunlight that
enters the oven through the glass or plastic top and turns into heat energy.
The best
pots are wide and shallow and made of thin metal in black or dark blue enamel
finish like graniteware.
Palkovic's favorite pot, though, is made of two 9-inch, nonstick cake tins.
Food goes in one, the other becomes a lid. Document clamps from the local office
supply
store hold the tins together. Edwards bakes bread in a 32-ounce juice can sprayed
with black barbecue grill paint, while Shimeall tents a piece of black-painted
aluminum foil over the cake she's baking to speed up the process.
Solar cooks say you can cook just about everything, from "Apple Solar Plexis" (apple cake) to "Solarque Chicken." Most slow-cooker recipes will also work.
Because food is cooked in covered pots--except for roasting nuts and some baking--meat
and poultry is more moist and vegetables more flavorful, solar cooks say.
Root vegetables are popular solar dishes, along with lasagna and fish. Dark
foods, like chocolate cake, cook faster than light ones. Because food doesn't
get baked
on, cleanup is easier.
There are drawbacks. Stir-frying and sauteing are out because solar ovens don't
have "instant hot," as Shimeall puts it, and sauces won't thicken
because you're
cooking in covered pots. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which has taken
no official position on solar cooking, advises all cooks to use food thermometers
to
make sure food reaches the temperatures at which disease-causing microorganisms
are killed. (For a temperature
chart.) It is not safe to leave cooked food more than three or four hours
in an unheated solar oven, and certainly not overnight.
Still, solar cooks find something magical about preparing meals with sunshine.
Says solar cookbook author Anderson: "It only takes a few brave souls trying
something that makes a whole lot of sense before people say, 'Yeah, I can do
that too."'