Book Review: "Solar Cooking: A Primer/Cookbook"

At home, I have been lazy about changing my home cooking from the electric stove in my kitchen to an outdoor solar cooking. At whatever time of day or night I want to cook a meal, I turn a dial or push a button and I have instant heat to cook on the stove top or in the oven.
I do intend to take advantage of the free energy source in my back yard one day. But I have procrastinated because I have a ready source of energy that has always been there...that requires no forethought...that is just plain easy to do.

But on the sailboat where I intend to spend a vacation in a few weeks, I have no such ready source of heat, no easy method of cooking. So for the deck of our little vacation spot, I have set about making a low-cost solar cooker.

It was for this project that I turned to “Solar Cooking: A Primer/Cookbook” by Harriet Kofalk.

The book begins with a design for a simple solar cooker that is made with a dozen or so items, most of which are found around your house or can be purchased cheaply: two cardboard boxes, a pocket knife, pencils, a yardstick, wood glue, aluminum foil, newspaper, stiff cardboard, aluminum flashing, black poster paint, and a piece of window glass.

The directions are simple and the illustrations make sense. This is something I can build.

Thanks to this book, we will have home cooked meals on the water using nothing more than the sun for a heating source. Once the cooker is built, I need only find a way to affix it to the deck...something not addressed in the book.

What the book does offer is more than three dozen recipes ranging from soup to dessert. All of these dishes can be cooked economically, quickly and in an environmentally-friendly way – in the sun. The author lives in Oregon, not a place known for sunny days. She offers tips on making the most of the solar energy one has.

We’ve all made Sun Tea...there’s a recipe for that. But what about Chili in the Sun? Golden Glow Soup? Slice of Lemon Pie? They’re all in there.

There are directions for canning and drying too.

This is an older book, first published in 1995, but it had been out of print before The Book Publishing Company published it again recently. I am so pleased they did. It’s an incredible resource for those looking to conserve both natural and financial resources.

The book sells for $9.95 and is available at http://www.bookpubco.com/.