How to Make a Solar Lunch

A fabulously sunny day and an early start paved the way for a delicious solar lunch. We discussed various items we might cook in our solar cooker– many of which were desserts!– and decided instead to try something more meal-like for our dinner. Jim suggested trying a simple lentil dish and some rice, so we gathered up the ingredients.

For the rice, I added 1 cup of rice to 2 cups of warm water. I’m trying to get back into the solar cooking groove after the winter off, and it turned out that that might be a bit too much water. I’ll adjust the ratio next time and see if the texture doesn’t improve.

For the lentils, we mixed 1 cup of red lentils with 2 cups of broth, 1/2 a large onion chopped, and a teaspoon of garum masala, an Indian curry-type spice. Those ingredients went into a second pot.

We let both pots cook for about 3 hours while we ran errands and did some garden work, to be detailed later. Then Jim reminded me of our dinner invitation. What had we been thinking when we put dinner in the solar oven?

We decided to check on the food and, to our great delight, both dishes were ready for our lunch. The lentil stew was delicious and made up for the less-than-stellar rice. We ate with happy hearts, amazed that the Michigan sun can solar cook a great lunch with such little effort on our parts.