Solar Cookin'

Summer cooking in these parts can mean producing a lot of heat, then desperately trying to get rid of it with the air conditioner or the whole house fan. That's one reason summer barbecue is such a damn good idea.

My wife recently made a shrewd purchase from Solar Cookers International, a locally based NGO. It's a simple solar oven that SCI apparently promotes in Kenya and Zimbabwe in addition to California. The oven is about as low-tech as you can imagine: a camping-grade black pot, placed in a durable clear plastic bag, nestled in an articulated piece of cardboard treated with a single reflective suface.

Here's a photo of Waylon checking out the cooker at work in our tomato patch:



Wife had already taken it for a test drive to cook a pork shoulder (that I didn't taste) and potatoes (delicious.) This weekend was my chance to take it for a spin.

I opted to try for a pot of solar-stewed green lentils and split peas, with sauteed onions, jalapenos, garlic, and paprika with a bit of lime juice and bay leaf. Green lentils often turn to mush, so I calculated that they would be a good match to the low-heat, slow cooking method of the solar oven.

In a matter of minutes, the pot became too hot to touch. Within an hour, a delicious smell of garlic and bay leaf wafted over the tomato patch. By late afternoon, about five or six hours after I put the pot out to cook, I had a decent batch of lentils-- soft, but not overly mushy:



Add some bulghur, yogurt, some delicious homegrown tomato sauce, and a little mint, and I was in vegetarian hog heaven:



If we continue to make use of the powerful Sacramento sun, I may try to make a slightly more durable version of SCI's product. We could make a larger, more permanent oven out of sheet metal relatively cheaply.

Healthy Spaces

Here, courtesy of MSNBC, is another testament to the intimate link between good urban planning and public health... and another reason to leave your car at home if you can:

A new study found that the year your neighborhood was built may be just as important as diet and exercise for shedding pounds. Those who live in neighborhoods built before 1950 are trimmer than their counterparts who reside in more modern communities, the study reported.

“The older neighborhoods had a reduced level of obesity because they were generally built with the pedestrian in mind and not cars,” said Ken Smith, a co-author of the study and professor in the department of family and consumer studies at the University of Utah. “This means they have trees, sidewalks and offer a pleasant environment in which to walk.”

Straight Talk, Indeed

Wow. Courtesy of DailyKos, here is video of one of the most evasive answers I've ever heard by a politician to a reporter's question... John McCain on adoption for gay families. (Let's not even get started on the apparent distinction he makes between "two parent families" and gay families...)