Solar cooking for $5

What would you say if I told you that I have an appliance that costs under 5 dollars and can save you hundreds? That this appliance will make you healthier, cleaner, and help the environment all at the same time? And guess what, I am not even going to try to sell it to you!! But I will show you how to make it!!

"Solar Cooking" has been around for centuries. People have used the sun to dry and cure their food so they could store it for winter and periods of drought and hardship. The solar cooking we do today is a little different. Basically what we do now is collect, concentrate, and trap the energy from the sun and use it to cook food like an oven or crock pot. One utility company did a study and found that in summer for every dollar used to cook in your kitchen you will spend 4 dollars running your AC to get rid of the heat that cooking produced!!

There are many different ways to collect and trap solar energy. For solar cooking the most common way is to build a reflector to focus the sun into an enclosed box or bag to get the temperatures needed for cooking. You don't need to buy an expensive solar oven to do this. You can make one with aluminum foil and a card board box!! I have reached cooking temperatures of 300 degrees with both of the ovens I have made. Just 5 dollars and about 3 hours for most people and you have a solar oven and cooking for free!!

I am not going to Post the plans in this blog but I will tell you where to get them.

solarcooking.org

I got both my designs from this web sight. They are good people. There is soooo much information on this sight that I want you to go there and read it. You can purchase one from them if you want or you can build one from the many plans they have. They have all the tricks to make building your solar cooker easier. Just way too much into to put in this blog. I just want to sell you on the idea of solar cooking.

My introduction to solar cooking was a crash course. Some friend, my wife, and I had a camping trip planned. It was summer in Arizona and most of the time there is a fire ban in place because we are so dry here. So I started thinking, how am I going to cook? Well, I had heard of solar ovens before and knew a little about them. So I started researching them on the internet. I read, and read all about them. Then I built my first one, the box oven that is in the picture. My mother was coming over for a reason I can't remember the first day I was cooking with it. We ate some biscuits that I had made. We weren't the greatest, but they were cooked!! Just by setting this contraption I made from a box and foil out in the sun the food was cooked! Well I was hooked. I like cheap. I like saving money. I like the outdoors. I like helping the environment. And I just found a way to do all at the same time!!!

Since that first set of biscuits I have cooked just about everything I could think of. Bread, pies, steak, roast, whole chickens, cakes, brownies, lake trout, cinnamon rolls, potatoes, omelets, lasagna, vegetables, "Hard boiled" eggs. . . well you get the idea.

This is a great project for the kids too. Kids like glue, cardboard, and foil too. They will be amazed when you finish building it and eat the brownies you cooked in it!! Plus it is a good lesson on solar energy the power that you can get from it.

So go to the web site, read more about this wonderful idea, build your own solar cooker, and wait to be amazed at your new appliance that you don't even have to plug in!! No batteries included because you don't need any! And enjoy your home cooked food thanks to the sun!

Enjoy this wonderful world that we have, don't waste it. Leave it better then you got it for our grandkids to enjoy too!