All about solar ovens

As we mentioned a few days ago, we sat down with Aliza from Baltimore DIY Squad (a blog that champions “sustainable projects for an urban environment) to talk solar ovens - since readers have been sending us a fair amount of solar energy items as of late, it seemed like a topical and relevant thing to discuss. Besides, solar ovens are pretty cool.

A solar oven traps heat via reflective material in a black container, which essentially makes it a solar crock pot. Since solar ovens can’t really overheat or burn food, they can be used to bake almost anything; apparently someone had solar-baked cupcakes for sale at this year’s Artscape. They’re also good for drying/dehydrating food, and they can be made out of anything - the DIY Squad’s model is made from a car windshield reflector (pictured at right), and others have made them out of pizza boxes. We can see these things being put to good use for camping and other outdoor activities since they use practically no resources beyond sunlight.

We were also pointed to Homegrown.org, which is a resource center for local/responsible food consumption. As one might expect, the DIY Squad has issues with food crops like corn being converted to ethanol, but the recent advances in cellulosic ethanol blends fit right in with their mindset of making useless things functional (of COURSE we asked about that). Check out their blog and try their laundry soap mixture, if nothing else. Stuff works wonders.