The Expanding World of Solar Box Cookers

CHAPTER 3

PATTERNS OF USAGE

Integration of SBCs into the lifestyles of individuals takes many forms. None of the uses are mutually exclusive and, in fact, most people enjoy the flexibility they present.

Briefly listed, here are some of patterns we see:

• Seven different SBCs are lined up on the lawn of a social activist. The air wafts an enticing blend of peach blossoms, crushed grass and lasagna. After the program, 50 to 80 people feast on the solar cooked food...and consider it an outstanding fund-raiser.
• A farmer fills an SBC full of jars of water, one jar with a pasteurization temperature indicator. The farmer then takes a couple of cooled jars of yesterday’s pasteurization run to drink in the field. On return after sundown, the temperature indicator shows today’s water is safe so it is stored. If anything had interrupted the pasteurization process, the indicator would have alerted the farmer and that run would have been processed again the next sunny day. Meanwhile, safe water is ready to drink from the supply of stored jars.
• In Sierra Leone, a group of women gather to make soap which later they will sell in Freetown. In Zimbabwe, the product is ginger cookies. In Sedona, U.S.A, it was a small organic, solar bakery for cookies and miniature bread loaves.
• A family of 8 leaves their Sunday roast beef dinner in their SBC and returns from church to eat immediately. If their regular wooden SBC becomes full, the remainder goes into a small cardboard SBC which "seems to cook just as well." On recreational outings, the portable one cooks food and holds it hot, ready whenever someone comes in hungry.
• In the dawn in Scottsdale, U.S.A., a woman carries pots of frozen pork chops covered with barbecue sauce and baking potatoes out to her SBC before she leaves for the University. When she returns in the evening, after a brief rest she quickly whips up a salad, loads perfectly cooked food from the SBC to the table, and serves the four adult males in her family. Thanks to the SBC she can pursue graduate education to prepare for the changes in her life when the teenagers leave home.
• A retired woman anticipates savory meals as she sets up her tiny, gourmet solar recipes for the day. Measuring 3 tablespoons of brown rice and some dried mushrooms with herbs into one darkened half-pint jar, and a quarter cup of lentils with seasonings from her bulk storage into another little jar, she happily plans she can eat solar food, each varied dish especially flavored just as she likes it, for the rest of her life ... all cooked free in the sunlight.
• An energetic homemaker clears breakfast and moves to set out a rice and cheese casserole for lunch and a bean pot for supper before going out to the garden. A pot of water also in the SBC will be ready for her hot drink and to steam fresh greens when she comes in to serve lunch. While the greens are steaming, she will mix corn bread that will cook in the afternoon and be great with the beans for supper.
• A marginally employed carpenter makes a wooden SBC which he arranges to leave in the yard of a family where the wage-earner is temporarily disabled and unemployed. The destitute family will prepare food from his bags of bulk rice and bulk beans and watch over the SBC in exchange for a solar-cooked dinner. At the end of an exhausting day, he will have an economical, delicious meal with friends.
• A college student arriving home with unexpected company whips a frozen dinner for each of them out of the refrigerator, removes the insulating foil and puts them in her SBC covering them with a second dark cookie tray. After they have finished studying, two hours later they chow down.
• Fourth grade students casually roll out their SBC and focus it as their teacher unlocks the small private schoolroom. Each puts a lunch into the solar oven to heat. As usual, at noon they gather under the big tree to feast and to trade nibbles.
• A shop crew steps out back to get their solar burritos for lunch. Someone has put in nachos half-an-hour ago which are ready for dipping in salsa.
• Attracted by the smell on her way to the door of the Energy Assistance Office, a woman carrying a small child twists her head to see a bubbling pot of stew and a cake baking....in a box?
• A man lies quietly on the beach next to his SBC, resting while his fish bakes.
• At the Retreat Center, scheduled groups approach the SBC every half an hour for a brief introduction to solar cooking and a hot mushy, chocolate schmore.
• Haunted by always burning her beans, a woman finds peace of mind in her SBC knowing that her solar bean pot is not scorching, the pot will not have black in the bottom and her husband will declare today’s beans delicious.
• Carefully balancing her tray loaded with pots of raw chicken, rice and carrots, a little girl approaches the SBC she built for science class. Tucking the pots inside her solar oven and focussing the reflector, she dwells on the satisfaction of making real food for supper. Her mother smiles out the window confident the food will be ready on time even if the child forgets to do anything else with it.
• A small, gray-haired woman strolls beneath the large trees in her yard to where her SBC is cooking on a wheelbarrow. She rolls it to the afternoon patch of sun, removes her "microwave" meal for lunch and leaves her three-grain casserole cooking for friends who are coming later in the day.

Such vignettes only hint at the variety of uses made of SBCs. The final example, The Sustainable Emergency Kitchen, will be covered in more detail since it can be worked in a number of different ways and can serve as a pattern for recreational or vacation cooking, or it can meet serious emergency needs on a long term basis. Savory food can be created from either fresh or stored food supplies for months or years while requiring a very minimum of fuel by using an SBC in combination with retained heat cooking augmented by small wood fires and with flint and steel on dry cotton fluff or some other method for quickly starting flames.

Equipment for an emergency must be as simple and labor-saving as possible, sparing energy and time for other critical activities. An emergency kitchen must be versatile and adequate to function one way or another any day or at night if needed. Rain, blizzard, wind, or any emergency must not interrupt the flow of nutritious cooked food for a family.

Many people plan to cook on a wood fire in an emergency. Yet there are problems with this. Many traditional cooking fires take large quantities of wood—an unrealistic demand at this time in history. As stores are depleted, wood may need to be gathered locally and carried home. Manual gathering and transportation of cooking fuel is strenuous work, exhausting and time-consuming. Utilizing mechanized methods of firewood gathering requires gasoline, lubricants and replacements to keep a truck and chainsaw functioning. All of these are products of a smoothly functioning industrialized economy and may not be available in certain areas or even globally during a longstanding emergency. Even with the help of a pack animal, moving fuelwood is heavy, bulky work. With exhaustion of the supply, fuel gathering must be done at greater and greater distances, and at increasing expense of time and human energy.

Furthermore, the numbers of people in our present populations can denude an area very quickly, leaving the earth stripped of the protection of trees and shrubs. Widening circles of devastation are growing today around many population centers where wood and charcoal are heavily used for cooking. It will take generations for the land to recover from such overuse if it is ever possible under the changing circumstances.

It is essential to plan to protect our remaining fuelwood trees by holding fuelwood cutting and gathering below the level of natural replacement so that our natural tree cover can grow back and the land return to a healthy condition. It also makes good sense to plant especially fast-growing fuelwood trees around the home in advance of any actual need since they take several years to grow. Mature fuelwood trees and orchard trimmings, if used sparingly, can do a wonderful amount of cooking, particularly if the wood is burned in one of the many varieties of improved woodstoves.

Solar energy is a non-consumptive and non-polluting fuel which is delivered freely and even in excessive amounts in the areas where most people live. The solar box cooker can be the heart of a sustainable emergency kitchen. The SBC would be supplemented at night or on cloudy days with retained heat and small wood fires. In addition, the Sustainable Emergency Kitchen may include a variety of solar water heaters, a solar water and milk pasteurizer, and/or a solar food dryer. There might also be an organic food-producing garden and food producing solar greenhouse.

Small wood fires differ from regular campfires and from most traditional wood stoves in that a minimum of wood is utilized. Gathered wood is often ½ inch to 1 ½ inches (1.25 to 3.75 cm) in diameter...a common branch size and a common size for kindling. In a good stove, four or five small sticks at a time are sufficient. The flame is concentrated in one spot directly underneath the pot. Pans are placed directly over the flame which carries more heat than embers and is available immediately. A variety of fuels can be used—branches and twigs, pine cones, scrap lumber, twists of papers, strips of cardboard, dry corn cobs, dung—all in the same type small wood stove.

In recent years a great deal of effort has gone into designing efficient small wood stoves and there are many different designs. There are also some efficient home made designs that have been used over generations.

When using a single pot fire for multiple dishes, work through the menu, cooking the food that will take longest first, bringing to a boil and then simmered according to the schedule prepared by Dr. Kirschner. As each pot is removed from the fire, it is wrapped in a soot cloth, sack or paper bag before placing it in the retained heat cooker. When all foods are sufficiently heated and packed away, smother the fire to conserve the unburned ends for next time.

A new flame can be made almost as quickly as with a match by striking a spark onto a small fluff of very dry loose cotton or other very good, dry tinder. The initial flame can be used to ignite a roll of paper or very thin piece of wood to use as a taper.

Learning to cook using sustainable emergency kitchen equipment and techniques is not really very complicated. Practice helps make this a simple process. The value of SBCs as emergency cookstoves and as retained heat boxes does not detract from their use for recreational cooking, for fire safety, for keeping the home cool in the summer time, for reducing utility costs, etc. All these and more are legitimate reasons to incorporate SBCs into a homemaking routine. Using solar box cookers for fun or convenience when there is no emergency can organize the necessary equipment and can produce a very useful skill. Having an SBC in regular use makes it easy to cook through times of emergency with a minimum of disruption.