Cooking dried beans, lentils, steel-cut oats, polenta, or other foods
that require a longer time to cook are excellent choices for solar
ovens. Solar ovens like the Cookit, made essentially free from
cardboard and aluminum foil do the job, getting the heat out of the
house. This saves on AC as well since you aren't heating up your home
inside.
Two more things I like to do is keep my water heater temp. low....just
high enough to take a warm shower, but not hot enough to rinse dishes
properly. I wash clothes in cold water. To rinse dishes in hot water,
just heat the water in a black teapot using a solar cooker. The other
obvious thing to do is dry clothes outside. While we should eat every
day, it is possible to prepare for a predicted rainy day...overcast,
at any rate, by making larger quantities of food, then nuking it to
reheat it on the rainy day. I have 8 solar cookers including 5 Cookit
panel cookers and a parabolic cooker (all homemade from cardboard and
foil) and 2 Global Sun Ovens, which are purchased hot-box type cookers
which allow for faster cooking or cooking on marginal days, as well as
preheating. With a bunch of cookers all going, it's a great way to
meet your neighbors too who stop to find out what your doing. I always
tell them I'm "sun wor****pping". Solar cooking has come a long way
since the early days of sun tea. dkw
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