Solar Cooking for Convalescents

The sun was back in full force today, and we were both under the weather. Martin is recovering from minor surgery that he had on Tuesday and I have a killer toothache. I was looking forward to pampering him with some good solar cooked meals, but first the rain, and then this dental disaster, put a damper on my good intentions. I managed to stay upright long enough to get a pot of split pea soup in the Sun Oven this morning. I spent the rest of the day drifting in and out of sleep. Pain medication really does make me drowsy. First thing tomorrow morning I'm off to the dentist. Keeping my fingers crossed that it's just a cavity and he can work his magic and get me back on my feet.

Solar Cooked Chickpeas

With company arriving this week I can no longer put it off, I have to get the house clean. I remembered to soak the chickpeas for today's vegetarian stew, but I didn't have all the other ingredients. I could have made a quick trip to the store and had the vegetables in the Sun Oven around noon. That would have been enough time to solar cook it, but then it would have been lunch time and I'd have decided there was something else I needed to be doing in the afternoon and cleaning house would have been put off for one more day. I'm incredibly good at avoiding housework. So, for today's dish, only the chickpeas were solar cooked.

The recipe is from epicurious.com. Quinoa with Moroccan Winter Squash and Carrot Stew. I followed pretty much to the letter except I added chickpeas and didn't use any saffron. It's the first time either of us have ever had quinoa. I'm not quite sure what I think of it. I know it's incredibly nutritious, but I can see how it didn't really wow the Spanish conquistadors the same way other new world crops did.

Sun Veggie Chips

Anyone who watches their calorie intake knows that a crunchy, salty, satisfying, low calorie snack is pretty much non-existent. Unless you're one of those people that can stop after a single serving, and if you are I hate you, chips and such are pretty much a thing of the past. I know there's always air-popped popcorn, but that gets boring after a while. With that in mind I had high hopes for this vegetable chip recipe I found on the Weight Watchers website.

It's pretty simple. Slice the vegetables, spray some rimmed baking sheets with cooking oil, spread the vegetables out on them, season, and bake at 200ºF for a couple of hours. I used sweet potatoes, rutabagas, and zucchini. To get everything to fit in the Sun Oven I stacked the trays in a criss cross fashion. I knew it wouldn't be a problem to get the oven up to 200ºF.  I was more concerned that it would get too hot. I was also concerned about the condensation; I wanted crisp, not soggy, chips. To keep the temperature low and let the condensation out, I propped the glass door open on the latches. Even with the door propped open the Sun Oven temperature maintained a steady 250ºF. The top trays cooked faster than the bottom ones so I switched them around a few times, consolidating the vegetables onto fewer trays as they shrank, and removing the ones that were ready.

I was surprised by the results. I only used one small zucchini, thinking it would be the least tasty, but I was wrong. The sweet potato was good but slightly chewy, even though it was sliced very thin with a mandolin slicer. The rutabaga also chewy, tasted a little weird, and was hard to slice thin enough. The zucchini was awesome. Crisp and nicely browned. It could have almost passed for potato chips. Next time I'll use zucchini only. The only problem is the limited space in the oven chamber. I might have to invest in a Villager Sun Oven to keep up with demand.

More Solar Pasta Fagioli

Whenever I make lamb shanks with beans, a pot of pasta fagioli is sure to follow within a few days. It would be a shame to let the broth from the lamb go to waste. Technically it was not completely solar cooked. This morning I used the Sun Oven to cook some beans in one pot and a mixture of olive oil, leeks, carrot, celery, garlic and canned tomatoes in another. In the evening I combined the broth, beans and vegetable mixture in a dutch oven and brought the soup to a lazy boil before adding the pasta.