It was my second time participating in the solar oven workshops, and the first workshop in round two of the series, but actually workshop number 4 so far in total. As long as we are all clear now…
Where the first workshop was general information and data collection, this workshop was the hands-on session. The women received their solar ovens, instructions on setup and usage, and then cooked a dish that they had brought ready to go into the oven. We had several types of rice, beans, at least two potato dishes, a couple of vegetables, pasta, a dessert compote, and two cakes. It turns out the cooking rice in the solar oven is the most challenging. It is a tricky balance between amount of liquid and time. Items cooked in the solar oven require less liquid than conventionally cooked items, but they take longer. Beans just take a long time so they weren’t ready for lunch, but everything else turned out very well. The lemon cake was probably the most popular, but that might have also been because it was finished right as a group of kids were coming home from school for lunch.
As usual, kudos to Sarah for her excellent management of the project and workshop leadership. It is such a great experience working with her and this project.
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Does it use a special bowl? All the dishes seemed to be cooked using the same glass bowl with a cover. Nice soap!
This particular solar oven is made by a Mexican company and comes with a bowl and pyrex insulator. The inner bowl in which you cook the food is black for maximum heat absorption and the outer pyrex consists of both an outer bowl and lid for insulation. It is a really heavy pyrex and does an excellent job, but is expensive. We have been experimenting with using standard black pots and oven-safe baking bags for insulation. The women really need more than one pot to cook in on the reflector, but the kit only comes with the one. The reflector is big enough to accomodate several pots at once.