About Sharon Cousins
Sharon Cousins at a Roots and Shoots cookout that concluded a successful EZ-3 solar cooker project.
Southwestern view from our house.
I am a writer, solar cooker builder and designer, wife, mom, grandma, suncooker, gardener, musician, and more, living high on a ridge in northern Idaho, overlooking a fifty mile sweep of rolling Palouse hills with the far away Blue Mountains cutting smooth sweeps in the skyline at edge of the horizon. The fact that I can cook something just about any time the sun is out for long enough at the right time of day, at 47 degrees north latitude and 3,160 feet in altitude, certainly proves that you don't have to live in the tropics to cook with sunshine, though my exposure high on a southwest-facing ridge sure doesn't hurt.
I've been cooking since I was four years old (I'm fifty-six). I've cooked with all manner of kitchen stoves, camp stoves, wood stoves, open fires, barbeques, slow cookers, microwave ovens, and more, but these days my favorite way of cooking is to harness the free, clean energy of the sun.
I discovered the amazing world of solar cooking while doing research into what we foolishly call "alternative" technologies for a novel I am writing. I knew it was possible to cook with sunshine, but I had somehow gotten the impression that it would be expensive and complicated to get started. Boy, was I ever wrong! My first trip to the online Solar Cooking Archives was a real revelation, and within a few weeks I was successfully cooking with sunshine, using materials as simple as a car windshield shade, a bucket, and a grate to construct solar cookers that worked. You don't have to be rich or be a scientist to cook with sunshine!
I invented the EZ-3 Solar Cooker (standing on the shoulders of giants) trying to come up with something that would be a good, simple, effective cooker to help kids make for youth projects. While many solar panel cookers use an oven bag for a greenhouse enclosure for the dark cooking vessel, I designed the EZ-3 to be small enough so the whole cooker could fit inside a turkey-size oven bag. Enclosing the whole cooker makes a big difference, giving the whole set-up heat stability much closer to that of a box oven than most panel cookers achieve.
In fair to good sunshine the EZ-3 will cook very reliably, and in excellent sunshine it rocks. Enclosing the whole cooker in the bag turns a mundane box corner (the inside covered, of course with foil or mylar) into something almost magical. It takes a little longer than cooking on a stove, but the food needs very little tending as it cooks, and the slower, gentler cooking really brings out vibrant flavors in the foods.
I have many solar cookers, most of them homemade, because I like trying things to see what works. I turned an old kettle grill and a car windshield shade into a solar cooker that will crank out a plate of nachos or a quesadilla in five to ten minutes, and I have a homemade box oven that I made myself that bakes all our bread in the summertime and more, but the simple EZ-3 is one of my favorite cookers. I use it almost every day in the summertime (and whenever skies allow the rest of the year), to cook my lunch or make sauces or small amounts of treats or breads (especially nice when it's a treat that the others in my house don't enjoy). I've even been known to fly my EZ-3 and little black pot when traveling. I had fun cooking frozen potstickers in my EZ-3 on my friend's patio in California!
I hope many of you reading this will whip up an EZ-3 (if you haven't already done so) and give solar cooking a try. Most foods will not burn or scorch in an EZ-3 (or most other solar panel cookers and box ovens), which means the pots clean up easily. An EZ-3 will not make smoke or start fires, so you can use it in places where a fire or even a stove might be unsafe or against the rules. The power is totally free and clean, your house will stay cooler if you don't have to turn on the stove, the food is delicious, and solar cooking is just plain fun. It is my fond hope that once the EZ-3 gives you a chance to see how easy and tasty solar cooking can be, you will go on to explore other, larger cookers, and that you will tell your friends and families and communities how clean and convenient it is to cook with free, abundant sunshine.
Happy Suncooking!
For more information on Sharon Cousins, see her Solar Cooking Archive Wiki page.
I've been cooking since I was four years old (I'm fifty-six). I've cooked with all manner of kitchen stoves, camp stoves, wood stoves, open fires, barbeques, slow cookers, microwave ovens, and more, but these days my favorite way of cooking is to harness the free, clean energy of the sun.
I discovered the amazing world of solar cooking while doing research into what we foolishly call "alternative" technologies for a novel I am writing. I knew it was possible to cook with sunshine, but I had somehow gotten the impression that it would be expensive and complicated to get started. Boy, was I ever wrong! My first trip to the online Solar Cooking Archives was a real revelation, and within a few weeks I was successfully cooking with sunshine, using materials as simple as a car windshield shade, a bucket, and a grate to construct solar cookers that worked. You don't have to be rich or be a scientist to cook with sunshine!
I invented the EZ-3 Solar Cooker (standing on the shoulders of giants) trying to come up with something that would be a good, simple, effective cooker to help kids make for youth projects. While many solar panel cookers use an oven bag for a greenhouse enclosure for the dark cooking vessel, I designed the EZ-3 to be small enough so the whole cooker could fit inside a turkey-size oven bag. Enclosing the whole cooker makes a big difference, giving the whole set-up heat stability much closer to that of a box oven than most panel cookers achieve.
In fair to good sunshine the EZ-3 will cook very reliably, and in excellent sunshine it rocks. Enclosing the whole cooker in the bag turns a mundane box corner (the inside covered, of course with foil or mylar) into something almost magical. It takes a little longer than cooking on a stove, but the food needs very little tending as it cooks, and the slower, gentler cooking really brings out vibrant flavors in the foods.
I have many solar cookers, most of them homemade, because I like trying things to see what works. I turned an old kettle grill and a car windshield shade into a solar cooker that will crank out a plate of nachos or a quesadilla in five to ten minutes, and I have a homemade box oven that I made myself that bakes all our bread in the summertime and more, but the simple EZ-3 is one of my favorite cookers. I use it almost every day in the summertime (and whenever skies allow the rest of the year), to cook my lunch or make sauces or small amounts of treats or breads (especially nice when it's a treat that the others in my house don't enjoy). I've even been known to fly my EZ-3 and little black pot when traveling. I had fun cooking frozen potstickers in my EZ-3 on my friend's patio in California!
I hope many of you reading this will whip up an EZ-3 (if you haven't already done so) and give solar cooking a try. Most foods will not burn or scorch in an EZ-3 (or most other solar panel cookers and box ovens), which means the pots clean up easily. An EZ-3 will not make smoke or start fires, so you can use it in places where a fire or even a stove might be unsafe or against the rules. The power is totally free and clean, your house will stay cooler if you don't have to turn on the stove, the food is delicious, and solar cooking is just plain fun. It is my fond hope that once the EZ-3 gives you a chance to see how easy and tasty solar cooking can be, you will go on to explore other, larger cookers, and that you will tell your friends and families and communities how clean and convenient it is to cook with free, abundant sunshine.
Happy Suncooking!
For more information on Sharon Cousins, see her Solar Cooking Archive Wiki page.