A spot of solar cooking

It was a spontaneous decision really. It was a lovely bright sunny day, I had done all the chores and was at a loss on what to do next. Garden didn't need watering and the chickens were fed.

So I pulled out the car windscreen sunshade and pegged it together, popped it on top of a bucket and positioned it upwards and put a cake rake on top. Then went about trying to put together the cooking vessel bit. Totally unprepared. I found a black ring-shaped cake tin and a base off another cake tin to put over as a lid, then put that arrangement into a large pyrex dish. I decided for my first cooking attempt to do some potato cubes to eat for lunch. After arranging it all and putting in my thermometer I left it to it while a friend popped over with her kids.

One and a half hours later the kids were asking for lunch and I checked the status of the potatoes. They were almost done, but they were too hungry to wait any longer unfortunately so I finished them off inside. Not far off though! I scooped out the potato and reset the pots in the sun and noted that the thermometer got up to 75 degrees C. I'm sure I could have got it higher with better fitting lids. I was really impressed though and look forward to experimenting more over summer.