Solar Cooking in NY's Dark Days of December

When we were shopping for a solar oven last spring we finally settled on the Global Sun Oven. So far we have been very happy with it. It is very well made—the double walled construction (metal interior  and outer wall of plastic) seems to do a good job of retaining heat. During the warm spring and summer months the oven routinely reached temperatures of 350 degrees. Now that the days are getting shorter (dark by 4:30pm), and the sun angle is more acute, it is maxing out around 250 degrees. During the summer the effective cooking hours stretched from around 9am to 5pm, now we're down to about four hours of useful sunlight form around 10am to 2pm. The trees have lost their leaves, but with the lower angle of the sun we are still chasing the sunlight around the yard. In the summer the light would be blocked by the leafy canopy of trees, now it is blocked by tree trunks and neighboring houses. Today was a nice sunny day around 40 degrees, we baked an apple coffee cake. It will be interesting to see how the oven performs as the temperatures drop and the days get shorter. I think it would be pretty cool to wade out through the snow and pull out a steamy roast chicken.

Photo by Rick Jackofsky