Solar Cooking and Self-Reliance

We are now well into hurricane season here in South Carolina. While it is been a very long time since we've had a major hurricane hit here, the threat is always very real each summer/Fall.


The last time the Charleston, South Carolina, area had a major hurricane hit was back in 1989 with Hurricane Hugo. It devastated the area, and there were many places that had no electricity for up to two or three months. 


Supplies were also very hard to come by - ice, clean water, and food were difficult to find for the first few days. In 1989 there were no price gouging laws in effect, so being charged $10 for a bag of ice wasn't uncommon. Food was equally hard to come by, and expensive. 


One of the other issues, if you were fortunate enough to have food, was finding a way to prepare it. Having sandwiches and cold foods from cans may help you to survive, but a hot meal can do as much for your morale as it can for your nutrition.


You can prepare nearly any food in a solar oven that you could in a crock pot - breads, cakes, casseroles, rice, beans, meat, soups, stews, vegetables, potatoes - the list is endless. If you have several solar ovens, you can provide food for even a very large family - even the neighborhood - provided you have enough sunlight.


I conduct workshops to explain the benefits of solar cookers and solar ovens in Charleston, South Carolina. In these workshops I teach you how to construct your own solar cooker as well as give you tips and advice for purchasing a commercially made solar oven. 


I also provide recipes and I explain how to adapt traditional recipes so that they will work in a solar oven. If the weather permits, I also prepare a meal using a solar cooker for the workshop attendees while we are having the workshop. 


I am also very much an advocate of emergency preparedness. I talk about how to use a solar cooker as part of your emergency kit and also how to help others in your community turn to solar cooking.


I know that we don't like to think about emergencies happening, but they do. Historically, we know that hurricanes do hit this area on a regular basis. We have been lucky for the last few years - I know that I personally haven't had to evacuate for a while now - but that can all change in a short period of time. The tropics are heating up, and are getting ready to move into the busiest part of hurricane season.


I urge you to be prepared - educate yourself about solar cooking and about the benefits. It's not a difficult thing to learn - if you can operate a slow cooker in your home, you can learn how to use a solar cooker.


Expense is not a problem either - I can show you how to make a solar cooker using materials that you probably have around your home. At the most, I can show you how to spend around five dollars or so and have an efficient solar cooker.


If you would like more information about having a solar cooking workshop for your organization, school, or group - please contact me at scsolarcooking (at) gmail [dot] com.

Can Solar Cooking Help Eliminate Poverty in the U. S.?

Take a look at this video and then I'll comment.


It's a little long, but worth the time.





Now, this video is about bringing solar cookers to Africa, but when you think about it, this could also work here in the United States.


In areas where there is adequate sunlight, you could supply the inexpensive solar cookers to lower-income citizens and significantly reduce the amount of money they have to spend on cooking.


If they use electricity or gas to cook with, they would save the money that they would normally spend on their electric or gas bill. They also would save money in the summer because they would not have to have air conditioning to cool down the house after using the stove.  This would be especially helpful in the areas of the country that have a lot of sunlight, because those are generally the areas that have higher temperatures and would have higher electric bills for cooling.


What do you think? Is this a plan that might work?  Would the reduced cooking costs and air conditioning costs, etc., be a viable plan to help put an extra few hundred dollars a year back into the family budgets?


I think that it's a very, very good possibility.