Making the Most of Summer

Perth is a very sunny city. Even on the cooler days in winter, the sun is still out there doing its thing.

The 'Mouse House' is a late 1960s place that is quite small and once the summer heat gets in, it can become very uncomfortable. Knowing this, very little cooking takes place over the warmer months, where we tend to rely fairly heavily on the barbecue instead.

I had read about solar cooking at Eat at Dixiebelle's and seen one in action at the Royal Show and was very excited at the idea of being about to cook and bake throughout the Perth heat without heating the house. The possibility of being able to dehydrate food was also great. The experiences I have had with dehydrating (here and here) were really rewarding but I felt guilty with running an appliance for about 12 hours.

After a lot of research I decided on a Global Sun Oven. Although these are transported from the U.S., the distributor was only a suburb away so I was about to head over to their house and have a good look and a chat.

I was so excited about getting the oven that I put it to work straight away. What better way to test an oven that to cook something chocolatey.

The next day I thought that I should start having a look at some different bread recipes. Bread from the local bakery is really tasteless and filled with air, something that I just couldn't handle eating all summer. I found a great recipe for Portuguese White Bread, but do you think I can remember where I saved the recipe?

Our first sun oven bread loaf. Delicious.

On a trip down south, I bought a huge box of apricots from a road side stall in Mount Barker for $15. When we returned home the solar oven was again facing skyward. (The difference between cooking and dehydrating is that the lid is clamped down during cooking and when dehydrating, the lid sits on top of the latches to let the air escape.)

Unfortunately I didn't get around to taking any photos of the dried apricots before they were all eaten. We have also been really happy with the results from the apples, pear and nectarines. Yum.

Over the last few weeks we have had the oven out just about every day either cooking or dehydrating.

I thought I would show you the results of today's cooking. I have been using this recipe a lot lately as I wanted to make white bread recipes first to experiment with the oven. I split the mix in half and used half as a focaccia and the other as a small loaf.

And the house is pretty cool.

Take care