Solar cooker reaches 180F in 1 hour

2 sunny days so I tried using solar cooker.
You can definitely feel the heat in the reflector funnel when I stuck my hand in. Even in a cool condition it heats up pretty good.

I could get the temperature up to 180F, but it didn't get past that. I used a small black pot with glass lid. Replacing the lid with black lid might improve a bit. I just used sweet potatoes sliced about 1/2 in thick. After 3 hours it got soft, but doesn't have that high heat cooking kind of puffed softness.

2nd day I tried using larger pot with more vegetables (sweet potatoes, winter squash, parsnip, beets) but the temperature stayed at around 150F. The lid was shiny silver. Reflecting too much light? Same set up as the day before. Winter squash was soft and good to eat, sweet potatoes got soft, but somewhat fibrous. Beet and parsnip were crunchy. Need more cooking.

On the original website, they say it gets up to 350F. How can I improve it?

I also noticed that the sun shade was thin and floppy. Perhaps I need to secure that a little better too. I'll try with a bit more rigid type too.

I will try to get some dutch oven and get the whole setup a little more sturdy.

After all it feels nice to just come home and meal ready. The cooking behavior can be changed. Prep for lunch and dinner can be all done in the morning or the day before and eliminate necessity to cook 3 meals.

Solar Cooking

I just built a solar cooker. Real easy and simple.

It's so much more efficient to directly utilize the energy than to convert it to electricity first.

The challenge is our climate. It's hard to get good sunshine in Ahualoa so I made it extra large solar unit.

I'll find out if that works.

Here is the recipe if you want to try.
http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/Windshield_shade_solar_funnel_cooker

Fairly cheap to build.
Only thing I needed to buy was:

• Large reflective sunshade
• Velcro
• Plastic Oven bag (19in x 23 1/2 in) Reynolds - Turkey size

I'll use a bucket and a metal shelf from an old oven that I happened to save.

OPEN FARM DAY

OPEN FARM DAY was nice and sunny. It was nice to talk story and visitors got to see what we are up to. People kept asking us if they can come stop by and see what we are doing and we finally got to set a day aside and just do that.

In the end it is up to those who purchase and consume tea to decide whether our tea is good for their purposes. We do our part based on what we believe, but good to hear what people are concerned about and what they want and to incorporate their views into our practices too.

Nitrosamine generation

We live in convenient and highly efficient world, but that made it easy to poison ourselves too.

Nitrosamines have been known to natural farmers quite sometime. Not only ground leeching and contaminated water source, vegetables that we eat also tend to accumulate nitrate which turns into nitrosamines in our body. That's one of the reason many natural farmers do not use fertilizers both organic and chemical sources.

Nitrosamines are known toxins in human body. "Nitrosamines are also easily generated under strong acid conditions, such as in the stomach...." as de la Monte points out.

How much nitrate each type of vegetables accumulate under fertilized condition? Spinach is a well known one. Babies are sensitive to this. In Germany, many babies lost lives from eating spinach that contained high level of nitrate.

there is a correlation between increased fertilization and higher level of nitrate concentration found in vegetables like spinach.

Mr. Kimura of Natural Apple grower describes in his book about "rot test" that fertilized vegetables rot while natural (unfertilized) vegetables wilt and dry up or ferment.

Some natural farmers point out that there is correlation between nitrate level and rotting. I am not certain whether higher nitrate level will lead to quicker rotting. and it's not only nitrate that gets generated from fertilizer use, but many other chemicals are synthesized by plants.

When we look at herbal medicines used in oriental medicine, they value wild herbs more than cultivated herbs. Potency is obvious.

Home gardeners can find substantial difference in garden herbs like parsley and basil. When they are grown without fertilizers and only depend on rain water, close to wild harvest, although they do not grow as fast as fertilized ones and not as tender, but they almost have medicinal quality in their flavor.


http://www.j-alz.com/press/2009/20090706.html

Nitrosamines and Cancer Richard A. Scanlan, Ph.D.
Dean of Research Emeritus and Professor of Food Science
http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/f-w00/nitrosamine.html

Thinking of flavored tea and genmaicha

Lately I'm very interested in flavored tea. What happened to me? I have to say that I'm not interested in cheap teas just adding fruit flavors on low grade tea so that you cannot taste any tea at all. It is some extra flavor that enhances of experience of tea.

I came across a good genmaicha which uses really high quality sencha. Typically genmaicha needs high temperature to bring out the nutty aroma, but good grade sencha needs lower temperature. Their nature is opposite. Somehow during the processing the sencha seems to have received extra step that reduces typical high grade sencha taste. It doesn't retain the same look either. They don't fight, just harmonizing. I can guess what the process might have been.

Very faint green tea. what can we add to complement the flavor? It's much like a good cocktail, you don't kill the flavor of rum, but how can we bring it out better?