Speaking of the Sun….

I decided to dedicate a part of this week to a Bean-A-Palooza in order to replace my frozen bean supply that met an untimely end when “someone” left the freezer door open back in June.

So far 20 cups of pinto beans have gone into the freezer, and three slow-cookers filled with large limas, baby limas, and small kidneys are sitting on my counters waiting to be apportioned out and frozen. I cooked them overnight, which is a good cheap thing to do because I’m asleep and so are my lights, all other appliances, and even my heater is turned down really low. I’m getting the most bang for my bean buck, utilities-wise.

I kicked the season’s Bean-A-Palooza off on Tuesday which turned out to be a nice sunny day with a high of 50 degrees. I thought I might as well get out the ol’ solar cooker and cook the beans in that. After all, according to the laws of solar-cookery, it’s not the temperature that matters, but how sunny the day is that counts for cooking. So how did it go?

Well, the cooker did actually get up to the magical 180 degrees (I did use the reflectors; I hope that didn’t bother the neighbors, but heck, I put up with their 8-hour Journey marathons in the summertime, so fair is fair), which is where it needs to be for cooking. I was impressed: it was a 50 degree day, and my solar oven managed to capture the sun’s rays and turn that energy into 180 degrees. Wow!

But I actually had to finish up the beans in the slow-cooker. I was disappointed, but I think I figured out what went awry. Beans are among the foods specifically listed as requiring the longest cooking time in solar-ovens. My mistake: Not taking into account that the days are short now, and so not getting them into the solar oven earlier. Actually, I think that the days are just too short to handle beans right now.

I’m not discouraged though. The handy manual that came with my solar cooker is a good guide to what I can cook on a sunny winter’s day. These things are easy to cook (2 hours or less): eggs, rice, fruit, above-ground vegetables, fish, and chicken. These things are medium-easy to cook (3-4 hours): potatoes, root vegetables, some beans and lentils (probably limas), most meat, and breads. I will avoid these in the short days of winter, because they are hard to cook (5-8 hours): large roasts, soups and stews, most dried beans.

There is still a lot of good work my solar cooker can do, even in the short days of winter. I just have to keep an eye out for the sunny days. Which is not today, or the rest of the week. That’s ok, I have plenty of beans to eat, so no worries.