Cooking Outside in Summer

Outside temperatures are currently over 100 degrees in my corner of the world during the day. Inside temperatures are more comfortable, ranging up to 83 degrees before the air conditioning kicks on. In an effort to keep the A/C use down, I am striving to do more of my cooking outside.

Three solar ovens are at my disposal but I am not currently using them as much as I could or should. I'm still struggling with two problems. The first is finding a suitable location for them on the property where the shiny panels will not reflect blinding bright sunlight at neighbors' houses or cars on the roads bordering our property. Since we sit lower than almost everyone around us, this is a problem and will be even worse in the winter when the ovens need to be angled to catch the sun's rays. The second problem is loose dogs and coyotes; I worry they will knock over the ovens in search of food or, worse, mark them by urinating on them.

I will find solutions to these two problems, probably by building some kind of screening that blocks the reflection but not the incoming sun and elevating the ovens off the ground.

There are other options for cooking outside in the meantime, and for other types of cooking. In our last home, the only outdoor outlet was on a screw-in socket on the outdoor patio light - rather inconvenient for regular usage. Here, however, there is an outlet right on the front porch. Shortly after we moved in, I put my metal wine cart (never been used for wine) on the porch for various uses. A couple of weeks ago, as the temperatures started soaring, it occurred to me that moving some of the cooking outside would help keep the kitchen cooler.


Even though my sweetie generally cooks his rice in the morning, we still put the rice cooker outside. We've used the grill outside a few times as well. I haven't moved the toaster outside yet, but am considering it, and if I decide to make something in the crockpot, it's definitely going to be plugged in on the porch. Besides just cooking the normal foods in these appliances, I have decided I need to start changing how I cook other meals in order to take advantage of the outside outlet.


Tonight, I made dinner in the grill, cooking ingredients that I normally would have sauteed in a skillet on the stovetop. After preheating the grill, I tossed in whole I'itoi onions (small local onions from my CSA), a couple of hot peppers from our garden, and CSA corn cut off the cob. I also put in a couple of small tomatillos from our garden. When those were tender, I removed them and put in a whole layer of cubed summer squash from my CSA share. As soon as it was done, some soyrizo (vegan chorizo) from Trader Joe's went in the grill. While that browned, with occasional stirring, I diced a few fresh tomatoes from the CSA as well as a sprig of basil.


All of this, along with the soyrizo, was stirred into some leftover rice, cooked in the rice cooker on the porch this morning. It was a delicious dinner that kept the kitchen pleasantly cool.

Our long-range plans for the property here include building a cob oven for bread baking and having a convenient place to use the rocket stove on a regular basis (that won't result in the local fire department rushing out here). With the addition of a small sink and counter, I hope to eventually have the outdoor summer kitchen I've longed for. That dream is not going to come true for a while yet, but in the meantime, I intend to transfer as much of my cooking as possible to the solar ovens and outside electrical appliances as possible. Now, if I could find a solution to the fly problem...