A Reader's Solar Cooker

One of our readers, Alice, recently built a solar cooker and was nice enough to send us photos of the solar cooker. As she describes it:

"This small solar cooker is made of cardboard and duct tape. I cut a piece of metal hanger to support the lid; bought a piece of glass for insulation, and painted an old pot for cooking. Very simple and small, just enough to bake a few small potatoes. I put the potatoes in the pot in the morning, by dinner time they are ready."

Great Job Alice :)

Day 129 of our Green Year: Making Pita Chips

A few weeks ago, Layla and I talked about how bad some potato chips are for people, especially considering that several potato chip companies have pledged not to get rid of a cancer causing ingredient, but only lower it.
We enjoy some pita chips from a pita chip company located in Cranbrook, but Layla raised the point that we buy those chips from Cranbrook, which is then transported to here, causing greenhouse gases to go into the atmosphere.

As a result, we decided to make our own pita chips and it is incredibly easy. All you have to do is buy some pita bread, rip it up into thin little slices and put it into the oven. You can use some butter on the pita bread to help hold a variety of spices on the bread while it cooks. We are going to use Cinnamon on our pita chips.
Leave it in the oven for several minutes, until the chips become hard and crunchy. At this point, take the chips out and let them cool. Once they are cool enough to handle, you can eat them!

That is all it takes to be environmentally friendly with your pita chips. You may have to use the oven, but if you have a solar cooker like ours, and it goes to 400 Fahrenheit, then you can use the solar cooker and make pita chips that are very environmentally. Going a step further, you can even make your own pita bread!

Let us know how your pita chip test goes if you do it! Contact us at crwbaird@gmail.com

Day 25 of our Green Year: Building A Solar Cooker

Hey everyone,

Day 25 has come and it was a big one. To start, we took to task to build a solar cooker that would allow us to barbecue outside during the summer by using free and renewable energy; the sun. The solar cooker was built mostly by Layla who has a knack for these kinds of things. She was able to put it together using just reflective material, electrical tape and cardboard.
We tested it outside and within about 20 min it was over 200 degrees so we hope it works all right.
We will be posting up the steps to build the cooker soon and they will be displayed on a link to the side. Then you will be able to make the cooker yourself.
To build the whole thing, we did not spend over $20 so it is very affordable. We will post pics soon of how well it worked cooking. It may need fine tuning but overall it looks like it will work pretty well.

Also, thank you to Kate Webb from The Province newspaper here in B.C. This is a big paper and they were nice enough to do a story on us, which will appear on Tuesday. Kate also provided me with some links to other individuals who are living the green life:
No Impact Man - http://noimpactman.typepad.com/
Green As A Thistle - http://greenasathistle.com/

We should be using some ideas from those sites as well for our green initiative.

Stay tuned everyone as we begin to go more and more in-depth with the things you can build and use to help you go greener. We are hoping to make this an all encompassing year and want to cover everything, so thank you all for visiting.

Day 17 of our Green Year: Solar BBQing

For Day 17 of our Green Year, Layla and I are going to change our BBQing habits. While the barbecue is better than the stove in that it uses less energy and causes less pollution, it still is not the perfect option. This is why we have begun to look at solar cookers for our BBQing options. We do not have one yet, but we will be getting one soon to help use the most powerful form of energy we have at our disposal; the sun.

With charcoal, you get cheap fuel but it is very dirty. Each time you start cooking with charcoal, you are releasing soot and carbon monoxide into the atmosphere. This may not seem like a lot from a BBQ on your deck, but multiply it by the millions who barbecue each day in North America and it becomes a problem.
As well, lump coal which is made from unprocessed charred wood is a big time cause of deforestation and greenhouse gases, while briquettes have a lot of wood scraps in them, which contain chemicals that were in the wood before it was chopped down. These carcinogenic fumes then go up to the closest thing to them; your nose.

Propane isn't as bad as charcoal, but it is not perfect by any means. It is more efficient than your stove, so if you can, use propane or natural gas.

The best option by far, and the option Layla and I will be going with, is a solar cooker. These amazing devices can cook with temperatures up to 400 degrees Fahrenheit, and they can be used to deep fry French fries, grill meat or bake items. You can bake, broil, boil or roast with these wonderful devices.
With a solar cooker, no fuel is burned and all it uses is the free solar energy we all have. It is perfectly environmentally friendly because no greenhouse gases are emitted, as well it uses less materials in its construction than barbecues do. They also last longer, roughly five times as long as a gas or charcoal barbecue.

There are two options for your solar cooker needs. You can buy one from www.solarcooking.ca, or you can make one using the plans and many of the recycled materials you have at home, from this website: http://www.wikihow.com/Make-and-Use-a-Solar-Oven

Layla and I will be making our own, so check out a future blog.

If you make a solar cooker from scratch through the plans in the website we provided, let us know and we will post a picture of you with it on our blog!