Victoria is a friend of mine and is one of the kids from my first EZ-3 Solar Cooker project with Roots & Shoots.  She shared this story with me of one of her early attempts to use her cooker and said I could post it here to help other people not make the same mistake she did.

 

Sunny side up?

 By: Victoria G., Moscow, Idaho, USA

  It was June 21st, the first day of summer.  I had just woken up and I thought to myself, "Wow!  What a bright and sunny day!  I think I am going to cook breakfast in my solar oven today!"  So I went into the kitchen and I got out 2 eggs, soymilk, my cooking pot, carrots, celery, tomatoes, onions, some other vegetables, and cheese.  I cut up all of the vegetables and stirred it up with the eggs and soymilk.  I put it in my pot, put my pot in my solar oven, and set it outside. 

About an hour later, I went to check on my omelet.  It was about seventy-five to eighty degrees outside so I assumed that it would have cooked by now, but when I went outside, oh no!  The shade from my tree had moved where my solar oven was!  I quickly moved it about three-five feet away from where it used to be.  "Phew!"  I thought.  I went back inside.  About another hour later, I went to check on it again, and oh no!  Not again!  The same thing happened! 

          So I moved it again and 45 minutes later, you guessed it!  So I moved it again!  Then my mom checked on it for me and it was in the shade again, so she moved it, but the problem was, that after she faced it the opposite direction of the sun!  Oh no!  Huh!  I moved it back.  Then guess what happened?  The shade moved again!  So by the end of the day, my eggs cooked, but they also spoiled so I gave them to my dogs.  They loved the eggs though!  They where very happy! 

          So I learned that you should never try to cook food in a solar oven next to a tree, you should always face it to the sun, and dogs really like spoiled eggs with veggies! 

Learn from Victoria's experience.  Try to pick an open spot for cooking, if you have one available, and if you must cook near trees or other shade-makers, you will have to check your cooker more often until you learn the path the shade takes.  Always remember that it is really the ultra-violet rays in the sunlight that are cooking your food.  The ambient temperature outdoors is not an important factor in reaching cooking temperatures, but you must have sunshine hitting the pot and reflectors.