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Bless the Sun with Solar Cooking!

by Barbara Wow (Barbara Lerman-Golomb) · March 18th, 2009
Birchat HaChammah, Contest, Cooking, Sustainability

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In 1998, I learned about an eco-friendly solar cooker project for kids and about how a solar cooker, using the power of the sun, can be an essential cooking tool for communities living in developing nations that don’t have access to electricity or wood.

It’s not everyday that the sun returns to its original place in the heavens at the precise time and day of its creation. It’s actually every 28 years! The Jewish community marks the occasion with a celebration called Birkat HaChamah, Blessing of the Sun (the next date is April 8, 2009). Hazon is celebrating with an event in New York City.

What could be more amazing than the sun’s critical role in food production? One way to celebrate is to construct a solar cooker:  cardboard box, pizza box,solar oven, solar cooking. Over ten years ago, we built our first solar cooker together as a family project with a simple design of cardboard boxes, aluminum foil and glass. My daughters decorated the box with sun drawings and environmental messages. We cooked a variety of foods including nachos, pizza, s’mores (sans marshmallows), in other words, with just organic chocolate and organic graham crackers—can’t go wrong with that.

My daughter entered the Science Fair at school and displayed the solar cooker. That spring we attended the Clearwater Festival on the shores of the Hudson River, inspired by the desire of Pete Seeger (legendary folk singer and activist) to clean up the river over forty years ago. Pete was scheduled to display his electric truck at the Energy Area. We went to the talk and afterwards I told Pete about the solar cooker project. He was so excited about it, he asked me to do a workshop at the Clearwater Festival the following year. He said to give him a call to discuss it and he wrote down his phone number on my Clearwater program book. A few days later, I called. “Hello? Is Pete there?” He was, and we worked out a plan. My family and I packed up our solar cooker and brought it to the 1999 Clearwater Festival along with ingredients for nachos and healthy s’mores and materials for others to make the cookers. I led a workshop teaching people how and spoke about the benefits of solar cookers for developing nations and about renewable energy. Throughout the day we fed people who passed by.

As part of the Birkat HaChamah celebration, The Jew & The Carrot is having a Solar Cooker Recipe Raffle! You could win the recently released The Jew & The Carrot – Recipes cookbook or Food for Thought, Hazon’s sourcebook on Jews, Food and Contemporary Life. Check back to JCarrot.org for solar cooker recipes and how to enter the raffle. You can also make a difference in the world by supporitng the Jewish World Watch Solar Project to protect and empower the women of Darfur.

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7 Responses to “Bless the Sun with Solar Cooking!”

  1. Rachel Barenblat Says:
    March 18th, 2009 at 9:57 am

    I don’t want to knock the impulse to cook with the sun, and I especially don’t want to knock the desire to aid the women of Darfur, but it’s been suggested to me that solar cookers aren’t a good fit for African modes of cooking.

    In much the way that cooking in a crock pot / slow-cooker doesn’t provide the same result as stirring a stew on the stove does, cooking in a solar cooker results in dishes turning out differently, and I think it’s possible for the whole solar cooker movement to seem like a kind of Western paternalism — “here, let us show you how to cook,” etc.

    There’s an interesting article about these issues here: Solar cooking of traditional foods in Western Africa by Hollis and Reynald Chatelain. It’s about West African cooking, but I think the issues it raises may relate to the Darfur situation as well.

  2. Mike Hawk Says:
    March 18th, 2009 at 12:41 pm

    Solar Cookers are AWESOME!

    I want one to tailgate with.

    Thank you

    Bye

  3. shev Says:
    March 18th, 2009 at 3:15 pm

    Did I miss the actual instructions on how to build a solar cooker?

    Please tell all – April is just around the corner!
    Thanks.

  4. Pat McArdle Says:
    March 20th, 2009 at 6:34 pm

    Rachel,
    Thanks for flagging the article ‘Solar cooking of traditional foods in Western Africa’ by Hollis and Reynald Chatelain. It is an excellent example of the extensive training and experimentation needed to introduce solar cooking anywhere in the world. The careful study the Chatelain’s have done to determine cooking habits should serve as a model to solar cooker promoters everywhere.

    Almost two million people in China use solar cookers and almost a million in India. More would be used if governments and international donor organizations were willing to fund the extensive training and follow up needed to successfully introduce solar cooking. The reduction in deforestation, indoor and outdoor air pollution, burns suffered by children and the danger faced by women who must collect firewood and carry it on their heads back to their villages would be dramatic.

    The female Darfur refugees in three camps in Eastern Chad have made and distributed more than 40,000 solar cookers which are being used by women whose only other choice is to leave their camps and walk for miles into dangerous territory to find wood. You are correct that solar cooking is a hard sell in locations where people can still go out and collect firewood, but those places are rapidly vanishing.

    There are various types of solar cookers available including parabolic solar cookers which boil and fry at 450-500 degrees F. it appears from the article you cited that the Chatelains have not tried introducing a parabolic solar cooker which cooks as fast as a wood fire or gas flame. It would be interesting to know why they have not tried introducing the parabolic cookers which would allow the women to cook at midday as they always have.

    It would also be useful if they introduced the concept of integrated solar cooking which would help the people they are working with to reduce fuel consumption no matter the weather, time of day or season of the year. This system combines the use of solar cookers during the day, retained heat cookers and fuel efficient stoves.

  5. Amalia Haas Says:
    March 26th, 2009 at 10:49 pm

    Ditto to Shev’s request on instructions for solar cooker construction, particularly kid-friendly ones.
    Thanks.

  6. Barbara Lerman-Golomb Says:
    March 29th, 2009 at 4:17 pm

    Shev and Amalia-

    The solar cooker instructions are linked from the blog. The most kid-friendly ones are the cardboard box and pizza box projects. Let me know if you have anymore questions.

    Barbara

  7. Solar panel | Solar Energy | Solar Roofing Panel Says:
    April 3rd, 2009 at 5:59 am

    Solar systems work when sunlight strikes a solar photovoltaic module and excites electrons trapped in the silicon solar cell.

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