Health & Fitness
Sustainable Tarpon Springs - Solar Ovens
An invitation to be part of a 'Conversation and Action Network' of friendly folks with a vision to see a 'greener' and more Sustainable Tarpon Springs.
Living in an area abundant in sunshine, but in a home where solar panels have not been possible to install, our happy compromise has been to utilize another wonderful tool - our solar oven. It not only saves the energy of using the stove or oven, but saves the energy of a warm stove or oven causing the air conditioning to turn on.
Our solar oven might be considered somewhat of a novelty in this country, but in countries in the continent of Africa, solar ovens are a life saving tool. Without electricity, they can function without causing massive deforestation and serious pollution issues. In Haiti and Nepal, less than 2% of their original forests remain because of the demand for cooking fuel.
An international non-profit organization simply called the Solar Oven Society - or by an appropriate acronym, SOS - is working to save lives with solar ovens, preventing lung disease, eye disease, and burns. A family living together in a small hut might inhale the equivalency of 10 or more packs of cigarettes a day breathing the air from cooking fires!
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Jimmy purchased our solar oven as a Christmas gift from svHotWire, a Tarpon Springs company that sells solar and wind for home, boats, and RVs. The idea of having a solar oven for a boat is really a no-brainer, especially sailing distances and conserving finite fuel sources. Equally, we should consider it a no-brainer to use our free solar to conserve larger, yet ultimately finite power sources.
The solar oven is light-weight, easy to carry outside, open up, and position directly facing the oncoming sun. All that is required is an black enamel pot with a glass lid. It is somewhat akin to thinking in ‘crock pot’ terms - long and slow - but without even soaking black beans, black-eyed peas, garbanzos, or any such legume, the solar oven works perfectly.
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We’ve also baked squash, sweet potatoes, okra, and other garden fare. The sweet potatoes are incredible, super moist and sweet, sitting in their own sugar water at the bottom of the pan. It’s a special, high vitamin A treat to eat the skins of these delicious solar-cooked potatoes.
A friend has a cabinet set up above his solar cooker for dehydrating excess food from his garden. We bought racks for the inside of our oven for dehydrating, but haven’t tested them yet. Right now, we use those racks for room drying our moringa leaves. (Stayed tuned for information on food preservation in a future blog.)
We’ve noted that in the summer, the solar oven works very well, but is most effective in the other seasons when surprise cloud cover is not an issue. Amazingly, even with cooler outside temperatures, as long as we have full sun, the sun oven is fully operational! Friends attest to the fact that summer is the least productive sunshine of the year; nevertheless, we use the solar oven because heating up the house to cook a meal seems ridiculous!
Back in our eastern Washington days, when we were using a wood cook stove for eight years, I would have really benefited from this ‘direct solar technology’! We couldn’t light a fire without suffering, so we kept dreaming of an outdoor kitchen - like the ones used by Native Americans in the southwest. I learned to make all of our main dishes in an electric fry pan. If only I knew then what I know now!
Surprisingly, solar ovens came onto my radar when we lived in Seattle. Another ‘sustainable’ community sponsored a solar oven cookout in one of the local parks. Many people who participated brought solar ovens they designed from cardboard boxes covered with aluminum foil. And they worked!
This cookout was part of an event where everyone brought their ovens, their delicious dishes, and ended the day by sharing a solar oven potluck. Fortunately, the Seattle weather cooperated! Here in Tarpon Springs, it would be so easy to hold a solar oven picnic event. So, perhaps sometime in September, if anyone is interested - this is something we could schedule together.
Enjoy the videos on our oven and the Seattle solar oven cookout! And hopefully, if you’re reading this blog, you will get inspired to build or buy your own solar oven, doing your part to make Sustainable Tarpon Springs a reality!
