Solar Potluck Update

Note to self: After spending eight hours in the Arizona sun at a solar potluck it is not a good idea to drive two hours to Phoenix, get up the next morning at 4:30a.m, fly to L.A., and drive back to Phoenix the following day. It's exhausting! The solar potluck part, however, was a lot of fun. I had two Sun Ovens going all day. For starters we had biscuits, eggs, banana muffins, and oatmeal coconut raspberry bars. Around noon I got a pot of chicken thighs with rice and vegetables, and a loaf of peasant bread going. At 5:00p.m. everyone brought their dishes to the picnic tables, and by 5:30 everything was gone.

Normally sitting outside in the heat is not my idea of fun, but I was so busy cooking and talking to people about solar cooking that I hardly noticed the sun beating down on me. I enjoyed myself so much that I can't wait until the solar cook-off in Bisbee, AZ in June. I only wish I'd taken more pictures. I've designated Martin as our official photographer for any future events. I tend to get so caught up in the food preparation that I forget about anything else.

Pictures can probably tell the story better than I can, so here they are:

There was a wide variety of solar cookers, many homemade, but I'd have to say the most popular was the Sun Oven.

Many people ask me how long a Sun Oven will last, this one has to be one of the first ones ever made and it's still working fine.

Here I am putting the final touches on the rice and chicken before serving it. I'm still working on perfecting the bread. The texture is still not right. The interior has improved from my first attempts, but the crust is not how I want it. It's hard to explain, but it almost seems like it's glazed and it's too crunchy. I'm not quite sure what other adjustments I can make. I'm putting it on a back burner for now. 

Oh, and just for the record, I did get something in the Sun Oven today too. Martin's favorite - Chicken with Two Lemons. It's always a good idea to stick to a tried and true dish after such a hectic few days.

Solar Biscuits and Eggs, Take Three

It's not just out of laziness or lack of creativity that I'm making eggs and biscuits again. I need to perfect my technique. I want to make them - among other things - at the 28th annual solar potluck I'll be attending in Tucson on the 24th.

The biscuits were from Trader Joe's. They're the refrigerated in a can kind. I baked them first in the sun oven, instead of trying to bake them at the same time as the eggs like I did in the past. They were done in about 40 minutes. Mostly for their convenience factor, these are the biscuits I'll be making at the potluck. The eggs took 20 minutes and today I lined the muffin cups with pancetta and zucchini. The pancetta was yummy and I'm definitely using it for the potluck eggs, but I think I'll use spinach for the green.

More Eggs and Biscuits

Today's solar cooking project was once again eggs and biscuits. I was determined to get the eggs right this time. I like eggs for lunch; I usually have some kind of cereal for breakfast. This gave me plenty of time to bring the eggs to room temperature and preheat the Sun Oven.

Once again I put the biscuits in the Sun Oven first and let them bake for about ten minutes before the eggs. As soon as the muffin pan with the eggs went in the Sun Oven I set the timer for twenty minutes. Just having a timer going seems to keep me from getting distracted. The eggs were actually cooked to perfection after fifteen minutes. The biscuits still needed to bake a little longer, so we had the eggs with toast.

Reader Inspired Solar Easter Brunch

Thanks to the comments left by Sharlene on my post on eggs the other day, we enjoyed a nice solar cooked Easter brunch this morning. Her suggestion, to use a muffin tin to solar cook eggs that she freezes, inspired the eggs and muffins I made in the Sun Oven today. I don't have a go-to recipe for biscuits, if fact today may be the first time I've ever made them, so after browsing through a few at epicurious.com - some of them were surprisingly complicated - I decided to use a baking mix from Trader Joe's. I put the muffins in the Sun Oven about fifteen minutes before adding the eggs to give them a head start. To fit both pans in I stacked them, placing the biscuits on top of the muffin tin with the eggs, using a couple of canning jar rings to allow for air flow. Again the eggs were slightly overcooked, but that's probably because I got distracted. In the future I may just bake the biscuits first and cook the eggs while they are cooling. It would be easier to monitor the doneness of the eggs that way. I was planning on freezing the leftovers, but over the course of the day we managed to polish everything off.