Amazing Two Point Solar Muffins

If you know anything about the Weight Watchers point system then you know that most muffins are more points than they're worth. The low-fat blueberry muffin that a well known chain restaurant inexplicably offers as a choice with its entrees - I mean who eats a sweet muffin with dinner? - is eleven points; over half of my daily point allowance. I don't even want to know how many points the regular muffins come out to. And as hard as I tried to modify numerous recipes, the best I'd achieved without resorting to artificial sweeteners, weird reduced fat products, or muffins so small that you'd just wind up eating more than one, was three points per muffin. But today, on a day when I really didn't feel like doing any kind of solar cooking, I found a recipe for blueberry muffins that have only two points and used real ingredients. The trick? Kodiak Cakes  Flapjack and Waffle Mix. I used the recipe on their website for low fat blueberry muffins and used Weight Watchers online tools to calculate the points. Their recipe does not specify how many muffins it yields, but I got fourteen standard sized muffins out of it.

Solar Pasta Sauce and Meatloaf

Meatloaf and pasta sauce from the Sun Oven. What more could you want for dinner? And there's plenty leftover for sandwiches. The sauce was real simple. I put olive oil, minced garlic, salt, and sliced mushrooms in a dark enameled pot and put it in the pre-heated Sun Oven. After about half an hour I added a can of crushed tomatoes. The meatloaf is a mixture of ground beef, chopped onion, shredded carrots zucchini and savoy cabbage, egg, wine, and bread crumbs. I did saute the veggies for about ten minutes before mixing them in with the other ingredients and baking the loaf in the Sun Oven, so technically it's not fully solar cooked, but close enough. The pasta and the belgian endive were cooked on the stove. The pasta because while it's possible to solar cook it; as you can see in a previous blog post; it's much easier to boil it the traditional way. And the endive? That could have easily been solar cooked. If fact I had planned on solar cooking it, but I forgot - and then the sun went down.

Sun Roasted Butternut Squash

Roasted butternut squash is one of my favorite side dishes. We had some leftover lentil stew from Monday - when it was to cloudy to cook outside - and a squash in the fridge that needed cooking. Put the two together and you get a nice meal. To roast the squash just cut it in half, remove the seeds, slice, spread out in a glass baking dish, add a drizzle of olive oil, a little kosher salt, place in the Sun Oven, and enjoy.

Phyllo Peach Pockets

I had to find something to do with all the peaches we got on Saturday. Pie was tempting, but I wanted something a little less calorie laden. I got the idea for these from a Weight Watchers recipe. I've used it with all kinds of fruit, peaches and blueberries are my favorite, and like cupcakes, they have built in portion control. They can also be frozen, which is what happened to the six that are missing - I had them wrapped and squirreled away when I realized I hadn't taken a picture.







Sun Baked Phyllo Fruit Cups

8 sheets of phyllo dough, defrosted
4 peaches, cubed
1/4 cup sugar
1 tbs flour
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp fresh lemon juice

Preheat Sun Oven and spray a 8 cup cupcake pan with nonstick spray.
Toss peaches, sugar, flour, cinnamon and lemon juice in a medium bowl. Set aside.
Place on sheet of phyllo dough on work surface (keep remaining sheets of phyllo covered to prevent drying). Lightly spray the phyllo with cooking spray. Cut into four rectangles. Stack rectangles on top of each other. Repeat with remaining phyllo sheets. Carefully press each stack into the greased cupcake pan. Divide blueberry mixture evenly among phyllo lined cups. Cover with the edges of the phyllo dough. Lightly spray fruit cups with cooking spray and sprinkle with additional sugar.
Bake in Sun Oven until golden brown, about 45 minutes.


Oh, and in case you were wondering - yesterday was too cloudy for solar cooking.

All American Solar Dinner

You can't get much more American than BBQ pulled pork and corn on the cob and both are easy to make in the Sun Oven. I normally use a premixed purchased spice rub, but today I made my own, and I was pleased to discover that it's much better - not to mention cheaper. Rub the spices all over the pork shoulder, sprinkle some liquid smoke on it, put it in a dark covered pot, and let it gently simmer away in the Sun Oven. The aromas will make your neighbors think you've got a BBQ pit.

The corn on the cob was an afterthought. I didn't even put it in the Sun Oven until after 4 p.m. I'd gone to the store to get some salad fixings and it looked too good to pass up. As you can see in the picture you can cook it in its husk. Give it a good wash and put it in the Sun Oven as is. You can cook it along with your main dish, just set it next to, or on top of the pot.

Basic Dry Rub - adapted from "Cheater BBQ" by Mindy Merrell and R.B. Quinn

1/4 cup paprika
2 tablespoons kosher salt
1 tablespoon granulated garlic
1 tablespoon dry mustard

Combine all ingredients in a jar with a tight-fitting lid. Shake to combine.

Pasta e Ceci for Dinner

Luckily I got this going before heading out to the the peach festival at Schnepf Farms, because after a morning in the Arizona sun the last thing I want to do is cook. At dinnertime all I had to do was boil the pasta. We'd had a late lunch at the Queen Creek Olive Mill so neither of us was very hungry; a bowl of pasta and chickpea soup and few fresh peaches for dessert was all we needed.




Pasta e Ceci

Pasta e Ceci (chickpea and pasta soup)

1/2 lb dry chickpeas

1 TBS olive oil

1 leek, white and pale green part only, chopped (or 1 small onion)

2 medium carrots, chopped

2 stalks celery, chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

1 cup chopped tomatoes, preferably Pomì

salt

pepper

1 cup small tubular pasta such as ditalini

2 TBS chopped fresh rosemary

1 TBS balsamic vinegar

freshly grated parmesan cheese

You will need two pots that fit side by side in the Sun Oven

Soak chickpeas overnight. Drain, put chickpeas in a dark pot with enough water to cover them by about an inch. Put olive oil, leeks, carrots, celery, garlic, and tomatoes in another dark pot. Place both pots, side by side, in the Sun Oven. When chickpeas are cooked remove both pots from solar oven. Set aside 1 cup chickpeas. Combine the remaining chickpeas with the other ingredients in a large pot and blend with a emersion blender. If soup is too thick add some water. Stir in the reserved chickpeas, salt and pepper to taste and if at this point there is still enough sunshine you can add the pasta and put the soup back in the Sun Oven. Just before serving stir in the rosemary and balsamic vinegar. Serve with parmesan cheese and a drizzle of olive oil. If it's too late to cook the pasta in the solar oven complete the soup on the stovetop. Do not cook the pasta until you are ready to eat or it will get mushy. Serves 4 to 6.

No Fail Solar Eggs

 Once again there's nothing new from the Sun Oven today. Just a batch of solar baked eggs with spinach.

 Take six room eggs at room temperature, crack them in to muffin greased muffin tins lined with fresh spinach leaves, and bake in a pre-heated Sun Oven for twenty minutes. They come out perfect every time and can be frozen for future use. Just remember to set a timer and you can't go wrong. 

Solar Split Pea Soup - Always a Good Choice

Yesterday's parchment paper party was about as much excitement as I can handle in one week, so today it was back to an old favorite - split pea soup. It turned out to be a good choice. The weather was marginal, as far as solar cooking goes. At one point it was completely overcast and, as luck would have it, that was during the only two hours I was not at home. But no need to worry. Even if the Sun Oven's temperature did drop while I was away the soup doesn't have any ingredients that could easily poison us, just oil, onion, carrots, celery, split peas, and marjoram.

Parchment Paper Produce Party

I had so much fun cooking asparagus in a parchment paper the other day that today I went a little veggie crazy. It felt like Christmas when I took everything out of the Sun Oven and opened all the packets.

The only thing I had in the fridge were some carrots so I got those started - I figured they'd need to cook longer than most vegetables - and headed off to the grocery store. The pickings were slim. I got a fennel bulb, some belgian endive, and a head of radicchio which I wound up not using. I also managed to round up a few, small, zucchini from our garden. For seasoning I used olive oil, kosher salt, tarragon on the carrots, fresh mint on the zucchini, and lemon on the fennel.

Parchment paper packets should come in handy. It would be easy to place them along side, or on top of, the main dish when another pot might not fit in the Sun Oven. And like I mentioned in my previous post - clean up is a cinch.

Solar Hobo Chicken

I got this recipe from the book "Cheater BBQ: Barbecue Anytime, Anywhere, in Any Weather". It's about as simple as they come. They use a crock-pot, but pretty much anything that can be made in a crock-pot can be made better in a Sun Oven. You line your pot - I used my oval black enamel roasting pan - with a large enough piece of tin foil to wrap the chicken, put the chicken in it, rub it with the spice mixture, put a quartered onion in the cavity, pour 1/4 cup of liquid smoke on it, and wrap it in the tin foil. I'm not quite sure what the tin foil is for. The book claims that skin will brown nicely but mine came out soggy. The overall flavor and texture of the bird was good, but "Chicken with Two Lemons" is still my favorite Sun Oven chicken recipe.

No Mess Baked Asparagus

The most challenging part of today's solar cooking project was maintaining the correct oven temperature. I got the idea to bake asparagus in a parchment paper packet from an article in the New York Times. Once the asparagus is seasoned - I used olive oil and kosher salt - and wrapped in the paper, it is then baked at 200ºF for about ninety minutes. Out of habit I set the Sun Oven out and focused it towards the sun for maximum exposure. When my packet was ready to go the oven had already reached 350ºF. I fiddled with the Sun Oven's position and got it down to the desired temperature by turning it out of the direct sunlight. I did need to continue turning it every twenty minutes or so to keep the temperature from dropping too far. It's actually a pretty good method for cooking asparagus. I like the texture and flavor much better than a steamer. I think I'll try the same technique with other vegetables especially because Sun Oven + parchment paper = zero clean up!

Solar Salmon Stuffed Zucchini

In may seem kind of silly to buy zucchini when we're going to be inundated with them from our garden in a few weeks, but this is what I wanted to eat today so that's what I did. It's easy to make. I used my salmon loaf recipe to stuff the hollowed out zucchini. I didn't have a big enough covered pan to fit all of them so I used a useful solar cooking trick; take a glass baking dish, cover it tightly with tin foil, then cover that with a dark tea cloth before placing it in the Sun Oven. It works, trust me. The tea cloth will not catch of fire and if you don't use one the heat will be deflected out of the cooking chamber and ruin your food.

Sun Oven Soup

  Today I had little desire to cook anything and even less desire to go grocery shopping. Luckily I had quite a few leftovers in the fridge and I managed to throw together a pot of soup, Pasta Fagioli, to be exact. I started with a base of chopped leeks, celery, garlic, and a can of petite diced tomatoes. Normally I'd use carrots too, but I didn't have any. I tossed everything into the pot with a little olive oil. I didn't even bother to saute it first - it went straight into the Sun Oven.

  After an hour or so in the Sun Oven it was time to add the rest of the ingredients. About two cups of beans that I'd cooked earlier in the week, a carton of broth, and the pasta.

  Then it was back to the Sun Oven for another hour or so. When it was ready I stirred in a little more olive oil, some balsamic vinegar, salt, and pepper. A dusting of parmesan cheese and dinner was served.

  I must say, solar cooking is perfect when you don't want to cook. It took me maybe all of five minutes to chop the vegetables, the Sun Oven did the rest.

Solar Chicken and Cupcakes

I don't know how it happened, but I totally forgot to update my blog yesterday. I baked the cupcakes, took the pictures, even thought about what I was going to say, but after a night out I went straight to bed because I had to get up early this morning.

Yesterday was a pretty non eventful day solar cooking-wise. I had planned on making chicken, but then I remembered we wouldn't be home for dinner, so I baked vanilla cupcakes - from a mix - instead. I spent most of the morning debating whether to go to the store for some apple sauce or just go ahead and use the full stick of butter the directions on the box called for. I finally decided to go with the butter. While it was melting in the Sun Oven I got the brilliant idea to substitute half the butter with a mashed banana, which I had on hand. The next step was to determine how many cupcakes the mix would yield. As a cake it was supposed to come out to nine servings, so I figured twelve cupcakes would be plenty. I was wrong. As you can see from the picture I had to get a little creative, using custard cups for the excess batter, and even then the muffin tins were overfilled. Hopefully the next time I use the mix - it's from Trader Joe's and it's pretty good - I'll remember that I can get twelve cupcakes out of it. I like to make cupcakes because they freeze well. Not that polishing of an entire cake would be a problem for the two of us.

I'm actually pretty proud of today's solar cooking project. Not because it's a complicated recipe, but because it took a little planing. I had to go out early today, leaving Martin in charge of setting up the Sun Oven. So I did most of the work yesterday. I took four chicken thighs, trimmed the excess fat, put some garlic and rosemary under the skin, rubbed them with some salt and pepper, covered them with some lemon slices and refrigerated them overnight. Martin put them in the Sun Oven in the afternoon and when I got home I made a nice risotto to go with them. And although the risotto was not solar cooked it is worth mentioning that it was made with zucchini flowers from our garden.

A Quick Solar Lunch

It was hot and sunny and I had no idea what I was going to cook today. I was out most of the day, but I did make it home for lunch. It seemed like a good day to whip up a batch of 20 minute solar eggs. Now that I know to set the timer, they come out perfect every time. Even with the little amount of time I had, and the total lack of planning, we managed to have at least one solar cooked meal today. Dinner was leftovers.

Solar Lunch and Dinner

Most recipes for lamb shanks call for one shank per serving, but I think that's way too much. I take the meat off the bones before serving it. That way there's always some leftover for shepherd's pie. This is another solar hybrid. I boiled the potatoes, rutabaga, and parsnip for the topping and sauteed the leeks, mushrooms, and zucchini for the filling on the stove before assembling the pie and baking it in the Sun Oven. Other ingredients of the filling were the leftover lamb, a little bit of water, a packet of brown gravy mix and frozen peas. It makes four generous servings. It was ready early enough to have it for both lunch and dinner. Not bad, six meals from two lamb shanks.

Easy Vegetarian Solar Chili

The weather was back to normal today. Sun, sun, and more sun. Made a pot of vegetarian chili. It was a two step process. First I cooked some beans, you could use canned, but I like the taste of dried beans better. When they were tender I added them to the other ingredients and let the whole thing simmer some more. Martin had a bowl of it as a snack when he got home. For dinner I served it over pasta.




Vegetarian Chili

1/2 lb dry pinto beans
1 Tbs olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 chipotle pepper in adobo sauce, chopped
1 medium sweet potato, peeled and cubed
1 15 oz can mexican stewed tomatoes
1 15 oz can pumpkin
salt to taste

Soak beans overnight, drain, add enough water to cover them by an inch and simmer in the Sun Oven until tender. In a pot large enough to hold all the ingredients saute the onion in the oil until soft. Add the remaining ingredients and the drained cooked beans. Simmer in the Sun Oven until the sweet potatoes are soft.

A Windy Day in Phoenix

Today's crazy weather caught me totally off guard. All morning there wasn't a cloud in the sky. I didn't even bother to check the forecast. I mean, what could possibly go wrong? I took my time getting the lamb shanks ready. I already knew this was going to be a mixed medium meal, that is not entirely solar cooked. The onions and lamb shanks were browned on the stove before transferring everything to the Sun Oven. By the time that was done there were a few clouds in the sky, nothing of real concern, braised meats by definition cook at a low temperature for a long time.

With dinner simmering happily away I went about my business. I kept an eye on the cloud situation, it was once again a day of on again off again sunshine, but the Sun Oven seemed to be maintaining a satisfactory temperature. I don't know why I finally decided to check the forecast on accuweather.com, but when I did I was surprised to see a big banner at the top of the page that said "Red Alert! High Wind Warning! Chance of Thunderstorms!". I'd never seen that before. I'd barely finished reading it when the wind in fact did pick up and within minutes the partly cloudy sky was completely overcast and dark. It was time to move the lamb inside. But wait, it doesn't end here. Half an hour later the sun came out again so I moved the lamb back to the Sun Oven where it stayed until dinnertime. And with all the back and forth I'd worked up a nice appetite.

Mix Saves the Day

When it's past noon and I still haven't decided what to put in the Sun Oven I know it's time to reach for a mix. This one from Calhoun Bend Mill for Cherry Oatmeal Crunch is pretty good, especially with unsweetened canned cherries. All you have to do is add butter (I used half butter and half applesauce) sprinkle it over the drained cherries, and bake. The instructions say to add some sugar to the cherries, but I don't. It's sweet enough without it.

Solar Lentil Stew

The plan for today was to get dinner started before going to the dentist. I was pretty sure that I wouldn't feel like doing any cooking, solar or non, after dental surgery. Lentil stew seemed like a good option. I could serve it with rice or pasta, or even with the bread I baked yesterday. I chopped up and sauteed an onion, a couple of carrots, some celery, and a few cloves of garlic in some olive oil in one pot, mixed in a can of dice tomatoes and put a cup of dried lentils and some water in another, and off I went. When I got back I mixed it all together. The surgery went well, the stew smelled good, but all I felt like eating was mashed potatoes. So I wound up doing a little more cooking anyway. Martin enjoyed the stew. He had it for lunch and dinner.