Bad blogger

I have been a bad blogger these past few weeks.  I apologize.  I have my kids home and my husband around, and I just want to spend my time with them most days.

However, I am still solar cooking!  Most things are oldies but goodies, but I should share how they are working out.

Chili – yet -just as good this time as it was the first day I solar cooked.  I can’t recommend this recipe enough!

Cupcakes – I made the Bob’s Redmill Vanilla Cake ones this time, and they turned out better then the chocolate ones.  I make them as cupcakes so that they will fit into the oven.  I have to put a black towel over the muffin tin so that they will cook, and I’m having trouble with the towel getting into the batter.  I may need to try toothpicks to alleviate this problem.

Rice – I bombed this.  I have been cooking later in the afternoon as the sun is staying up longer and I have been able to cook after 3:00.  However, the cooker just didn’t boil the water, so I had to regroup for this.  Next time I’ll cook it earlier!

 

And then we went on vacation again (a bit a fiasco for another time) and once again the solar oven wouldn’t fit in the car.

The cooker itself is holding up well, though it is getting a bit dirty inside.  I may need to try cleaning it again.  Hopefully I will remember not to use vinegar, as the last time I ended up with vinegar tasting food!  Yuck!

Foiled Again

I have been trying to post even when things aren’t going as solar-splendidly as I might like.  Today is a good example.

I had purchased two bags of baking mixes to make cupcakes for my son’s birthday party tomorrow.  It was going to be a candy theme (his choice) and we were going to have a table of toppings that you could put on your cupcake to decorate it.  Today was going to be cupcake baking day in preparation for tomorrow’s sugar-fest.

However, we have come down with a stomach bug, and just had to cancel the party.  I’m not really feeling up to baking, and I suspect I shouldn’t bake while sick anyway.  So, alas, these two bags are the reminder of the solar cooking that I didn’t do today…

Crayons

I made pasta for dinner last night, which I will post another time, but the real fun yesterday was solar cooking crayons. Yep, crayons. NO, they are not edible. (I have had 3 adults ask that…)

I found myself in need of a quick art project yesterday, so we took all the broken crayons and bits of crayons out of my kids’ art box and removed all the paper that was still on them. We then broke them into pieces and put them into a silicon ice cube tray that was shaped like stars.

I put the tray  in the solar oven around noon, and in 15 minutes they were completely melted. So much so, in fact, that I had to remove the whole tray from the oven, as the silicon was too flexible to remove with liquid in it.

The crayons dried in a few hours and they made beautiful colored stars!

A few words of caution:

I think I ruined my ice cube tray, as the colors seem baked in. Do this in something you don’t mind ruining.

The crayons are somewhat brittle. Color gently.

Do not eat them.

Rating: fun use of solar power!