Pre-Flight Croissant

The croissant are in the Sun Oven, along with a cup of oatmeal. My bags are packed. The coffee is brewing. It's a few days early but this is my last day of my solar cooking year. I'm leaving for France, hence the croissant, this morning. I'll be back in a couple of weeks. I do plan on continuing with my blog, only with less frequent updates. Thanks for reading!

Sun Oven Breakfast

Now that the days are longer it's once again possible to fire up the Sun Oven a little earlier so last night I scoured the internet for a suitable recipe. I was thinking of making a strata but that would have required a trip to the grocery store, and a lot of prep work the night before. It was almost bedtime when I came up with the brilliant idea to make oatmeal, which is what I have for breakfast almost every day. 


To catch the first morning rays I set the Sun Oven up upside down, removed the leveling tray, and put a rack on the bottom of the cooking chamber. It was the steel cut kind so its normal cooking time is thirty minutes. I combined the oats in a small pot with hot tap water and half a banana, covered it and put it in the Sun Oven at 7:45. At 8:30 I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it was perfectly cooked and hadn't stuck to the bottom of the pan at all. Unfortunately I wasn't quite ready. I'd forgotten to put the coffee on so I left it in the Sun Oven to keep it warm and when my coffee was ready enjoyed a leisurely solar breakfast. I can't believe I hadn't thought of this before. It really doesn't take that much longer than making it stovetop and it tastes much better. 

Sun Cooked Oatmeal Coconut Raspberry Bars, without the Sun, Coconut or Raspberry

The sun came out just enough to trick me into whipping up a batch of bar cookies. I started them out in the Sun Oven but had to surrender to the clouds half way through and transfer them inside. The end result was still good and I'm quite proud of the fact that I successfully modified a baked good recipe. Something I rarely have the courage to do. I used epicurious.com's Oatmeal Coconut Raspberry Bars recipe substituting sliced almonds for the coconut and apricot jam for the raspberry.