Solar Cooking at the Farmers Market

Train station in the early 20th century

It has been hot hot hot the past few days—hot and sticky—and today was more of the same. And since today was Sunday, it was farmers market day. The market is held in Old Depot Park, where the train station used to be located. I wish it still was, because it would be so much nicer than having to drive 10 miles to catch a train. The railroad line was abandoned in 1939, though. Now it's really just a big parking lot.

Rick and I had been talking about bringing our Global Sun Oven up one Sunday during the market and buying some vegetables, or some of the organic free range chickens or grassfed beef some of the vendors have for sale. We figured it was the perfect spot to use the solar oven—no trees to block the sun—and we could get dinner going while we were tending our tables. I suppose I should go off on a tangent here and say the girls mind the tables while Rick wanders around playing guitar and jamming with some of the other vendors and I generally float about babbling with everyone. Which is okay. Having the music going is really nice and creates a community spirit. I have no clue what benefit my babbling has, though. Absolutely none, I suppose.

Escarole from Monarch Landing CSA, cooked in our
sun oven in the parking lot of the farmers market

But, anyway, today was the perfect day to do some solar cooking at the market, except I didn't think of it before we left home despite the fact Rick and I had discussed it last week. A conversation with Charley, who coordinated our farmers market, reminded me, and since Erica had to run home for a minute I asked her to bring back the solar oven and a pot from the house (we're only about 1/2 mile away). I wish I sold the darn things since so many people stopped to look and ask questions. By then it was 11:00 a.m., but I just had to cook something to demonstrate. I didn't think we had enough time to cook any of the meats for sale, so I dashed over to Julia and Peter's table (Monarch Landing CSA) and they gave me some escarole, garlic, a sprig of rosemary (or was it thyme? I forget) and a few sage leaves. I added a bit of water from my water bottle and put the pot in the oven. In the short time it took me to get the escarole in, the oven was already at 300º and climbing. I was hoping to share the escarole with everyone, but all the farmers sold out of produce and everyone started packing up a little earlier than expected. That was okay with me because I came home with a pot full of escarole, which I set it aside and served later on with dinner. Charley got so excited with the whole solar cooking idea, though, that next week I'm supposed to bring the solar oven back up to the farmers market and the Naturally Grass Fed folks (our neighbor vendor) will be bringing a 3 1/2 pound free range chicken for me to cook. Hopefully we'll have another beautiful sunny day and I'll have enough time to actually cook the chicken! Our other neighbor vendor, Natural Earth Farms (their 22-month old son, Anthony, is absolutely adorable and loves music and dancing!), will be supplying some corn. (I used their zucchini in my oven fried zucchini recipe. I came home with more this week, since the recipe was so yummy.)

In the meantime, Rick grabbed a plate and photographed a few of the escarole leaves for me, leaving the rest in the pot to continue cooking. Thanks Julia & Peter for such delicious goodness!

Poultry in Motion

Run like hell and get the agony over with. — Clarence DeMar

Do a little more each day than you think you possibly can. — Lowell Thomas 

I'm not sure if Rick was feeling sorry for me or just wanted to get back out running, but he came up to me Monday morning with a big grin on his face and announced he was going to run with me and clock my route. Hmmmm, how nice, except I wasn't too sure I wanted to know how slow I went. Rick has this fancy GPS watch by Garmin. The girls and I had chipped in to buy it for him as a Father's Day present. We thought it would be nifty for him to use on his long runs in the woods since he liked to "go exploring." He'd come home with this happy glazed look and tell us how he started off on a 6 mile run that turned into 18 because he decided to check out another path and got lost. Like Daniel Boone blazing a trail. But then he fell. Three times in ten days and hurt his hand pretty bad, probably broken, since he managed to fall on his right side (and right hand) all three times. The watch tracks your route via GPS so you can plug it in afterward to find where, how far, and how fast you went. I was hoping the watch would also allow me to monitor his progress on my computer so I could go rescue him if the beep showed he stayed in the same spot for more than 10 minutes. It didn't work that way, though, but it did give Rick some fun before he got hurt—again—and this time got sidelined. So Monday was either desperation or pity for his poor wife (me!) who has to run alone now that Erica has moved. I made a coffeecake to go out in the solar oven, stripped the bed, and did a load of laundry to hang outside in the sun. Basically I dawdled a bit to psyche myself up and get my legs working some before this big adventure. Heck, Erica and I usually walked a mile first to gossip mommy-daughter stuff. And we didn't actually run together. Our running routes criss-crossed each other and we had it worked out so we ended at the same time. But Rick? He blasts out the door. He says walking is for sissies. I was in for trouble.

I felt like I was about to run the New York City Marathon. Rick kept looking down at his watch. I'm sure we made a strange running couple—the chubby wife beet red and sweating and the fit husband effortlessly running alongside. He said he could still feel all his various injuries, but who could tell? Not me. To top it off, at the end, as we got halfway up the block, our mailman got out of the mail truck and started waving his arms to indicate a finish line. That gave Rick the incentive to sprint home and throw his arms in the air in victory. Fun. Turns out the route was just shy of 2 miles and we had run a 10 minute pace. I ran farther when I went out with Erica, but I guess I ran slower since I had no one alongside pushing me. And I could walk-run up the steepest hills.

You can imagine my surprise when he went back out with me today. I admit I actually asked him, though, because I know he really wants to get back to running and going with me keeps him going short and slow. On his own he'd go too far too fast too soon. I must be insane, but out we went again. This time I added in an extra block to make it 2 miles on the dot. Sheesh. I won a race right here in our own neighborhood when I was pregnant with Erica. Well, I won the women's division. Rick won the race itself. But I was remembering how I raced up all the hills and felt really really good instead of panting and feeling like I was seriously going to pass out, which is how I felt today. Then, I think I ran 4 miles in just under 27 minutes. Today, with Rick egging me on, I managed 2 miles in 19 and a half minutes. Faster than Monday, but, oh, so much slower than all those years ago. Where did the time go? As I dragged myself up the stairs Rick announced that tomorrow we'll go even further and faster. Oh, no! 

Nothing beats chicken cooked in the solar oven

Anyway, on Monday, the coffeecake was done by the time I finished showering. I brought it in and set out a pot of chicken drumsticks. This was a totally fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants recipe, but it was super yummy.

Very lightly oil the bottom of a pot. Roll the chicken drumsticks around to get them coated. Crush two large cloves of garlic in a bowl. Add some salt, pepper, paprika, thyme, pinch of cayenne, crushed red pepper, and a dash of sugar. I just kept adjusting the amounts until I had what looked like enough to rub all over the drumsticks. Then I set the covered pot outside in the Sun Oven for maybe 4 hours. The oven was at 300º when I set them out, but it was down to 150º by the time I took everything in at dinnertime. On the side, I also made macaroni salad and cooked some collard greens in a bit of chicken broth with crumbled bacon and minced onion. Totally delicious!!

Enjoy. I have to go get a good night's sleep. Rick says I'm in training. For what I don't know.

Solar Bread

Bread is often used as a metaphor for life. In fact, the word is used just as often as a metaphor as it is a food. Peter Reinhart has written some wonderful books on bread, many of which I own and refer to every day. In an interview, he states "bread making parallels the stages of how our souls unfold in search of meaning and purpose . . . it is whether each of us can find the links, the metaphorical and actual bridges that connect us to something bigger than ourselves." 


I'm not nearly as eloquent as Peter Reinhart, but I share his sentiment. As a mother and wife, making bread is a prayer of love. To me, a meal isn't complete without an accompanying loaf of bread. The smell of it cooking brings a sense of satisfaction and well being (but the 45 minute wait to slice it open is absolutely agonizing). The look on everyone's face as they eat a still warm piece of bread, though, is the best reward.

Our Global Sun Oven out by the garden path.

Rick, my wonderful and talented husband of 32 years, recently discovered the art of bread making and makes such awesome bread that that I've pretty much delegated him as baker of our daily bread. That leaves me to make the sourdough baguettes, the bagels, pita bread, and whatever other bread strikes my fancy. He's been absorbed in his new inkle loom, though, so I decided to experiment with the bread making process. Knowing that we were going to have a bright sunny hot day today outdoor cooking seemed the way to go, so I thought I'd give the solar oven a try. I make coffeecakes in it—and they come out great—so I was wondering how bread would turn out. It would save on our propane use and keep the house cooler than if we had a 475 degree oven on for an hour. Anyway, I mixed some dough at 10:30 last night so I could get the bread out by 11 a.m. 

Rick's recipe is super simple—flour, instant yeast, sea salt, and water. That's it. Mix together and leave overnight. Normally he'll cook the bread in a Romertopf clay cooker, but I was planning on using two regular loaf pans in the solar oven. Because of that I increased the flour and added more yeast because I wasn't sure if the solar oven would be hot enough to pop the dough up nicely. And I couldn't resist adding some honey and powdered milk.

The finished loaves.

My solar oven bread recipe:

4 cups unbleached white flour

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1 tsp. yeast

1/4 cup powdered milk

1 Tbl. honey

2 cups water

1 tsp. apple cider vinegar

I mixed the dough and left it over night. I put the solar oven outside first thing to heat up. Then I divided the dough into the two loaf pans and let them rise a bit while I ate breakfast. I left the breads in the solar oven while I ran 5 miles and took a shower. When the internal temperature of the bread reached 210 degrees and the top looked brown, I took them out. The bread didn't rise as much as if I had left it for a longer second rise, or baked it in a hotter oven, but it did taste great and had a good crumb. Next time I might let it rise a bit more. Rick says I should use less yeast, especially since I'm leaving it overnight to ferment, but I'm not sure about that. I feel that the bread should be risen about an inch or more over the top of the bread pan before it goes into the solar oven.

We have a Global Sun Oven, which they say can reach temperatures of 400 degrees. Ours tends to average between 300 and 350 degrees. It's wonderful, though, and I'll post other solar recipes.