Cooking With the Sun: How to Build and Use Solar Cookers

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Summary: Simple solar ovens and "hot plates' made easy!
Review: Cooking with the Sun is the only book that gives a brief history of solar cooking and explains how to construct with clrear text, line drawings, and photos an oven that is as efficient as the expensive commercial solar ovens. You can build it for under $25 in materials and it will reach 350 to 375 degrees F. The "hot plate" just like the burner on your stove top is also easy to build and will reach temperatures of 650 degrees F within minutes. You can fry, steam, grill, poach with instant heat The book offers all you need to know to use solar cookers and over 90 recipes with resources. The sales of this book has tripled since the awareness of the Y2K problem. People are looking for easy ways to cook should they loose their power source.

THE SOLAR STOVETOP COOKER: PATTERN, ISNTRUCTIONS RECIPES ($12.00) is now available. This amazing product allows you to build the fascinating "hot plate" with ease. It gives you all the critical angles so there is no figuring to do. All you have to do is cut out the angles and trace them onto cardboard and assemble the cooker. It can be built in a weekend. It comes with an easy step-by-step instruction booklet with recipes, how-to information, and other solar cooking resources.

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Summary: Excellent rewrite of an older book
Review: The original "Fun With The Sun" (1961) by Dan Halacy has been revised and updated. The section on building a box cooker has been completely rewritten and results in a more elegant and easily built cooker. The chapter on building a reflector cooker produces a more compact and easier to handle unit but the construction involves a bit more work. The second half of the book is devoted to some excellent recipes. I have tested several and found them to be very good. This is an excellent book for teaching anyone to use our most plentiful energy source.

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Summary: A great book with many workable designs and complete plans
Review: This book does an outstanding job of outlining exactly how to construct and use solar cookers. The designs use available materials and no special equipment is needed. Most solar cookers in this book can be built in a few hours, and the reflector size can be modified to provide adequate heat under even cold, cloudy conditions. A first choice if you are interested in practical uses of solar energy.

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Summary: Very Basic, but Thorough
Review: This is a well written, friendly book that teaches solar cooking without being preachy. The directions to make the cookers are reasonable...The recipies are also good and well organized for the different kinds of cookers. As energy prices skyrocket, these kinds of cookers can really help save you money, keep the environment a little cleaner, and keep your house cooler. (You can bake with these things - and you don't have to bake yourself along with the cake or run the a/c to cool off again!) And though the sun doesn't shine all the time, it's free, and even in California, you'll be able to keep cookin' right through the rolling blackouts while not heating up the kitchen!