Solo Solar Cookin'

I've been blogging on solar cooking for almost two years. Why, with such a rise in lifestyle changes towards gentler, smaller footprints, are more people not harnessing the sun regularly to cook? It seems sometimes like I'm the only one blogging on this topic, yet it's so frickin' easy and simple to add to one's daily routine!

As I readied my solar cooker just now for dinner, it occurred to me exactly why more people are not utilizing this easy clean energy.

Maybe it's NOT so simple.

In order to regularly incorporate solar cooking into your lifestyle, one must be able to take odd moments out from your day to 1. load the food into and 2. check on / turn the oven according to the sun's position in the sky.

Although our company has been telecommuting for almost ten years, most businesses do not yet offer that in their culture. Picture the average, air-conditioned, cubicle-bound person trying to achieve solar cooking in the workplace.
It ain't gonna happen!

(Although images of

• suit-clad employees hunching over cookers in bland parking lots - instead of a smoking break they venture to the sidewalk to turn their cooker regularly then
• wearing oven mitts, carefully transport their aromatic dinner home on the subway

certainly made me smile and nod to surrealism, and my art history teacher, for providing me super cool mental images!)

Really, to adapt this into a lifestyle, it is imperative to have a flexible work environment (or not work at all, but who are we kidding? That is not a great option!). Delicate, multiple factors must converge to allow an environment where you can successfully solar cook -and- work in the course of a day.

So, now I get it. I understand. And I hope that you enjoy my silly solar posts when I don't feel like writing anything technical. : )

Maybe as more people begin to telecommute, as more companies see that giving their employees more life/culture during the workday and self-determination on how they are productive, we will see more people in this country able to solar cook.

And with that, I am off to make sure my cooker is correctly aligned to best capture the sun, ensuring tonight's dinner will be ready on time!