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 We've been cooking from solar for the past 4 days. So far we've tried potatoes, seitan, brussel sprouts and today we're cooking legumes for the first time. 🌻 The big advantage of using the sun to cook our meals is that instead of using the pressure cooker over the gas stove, which creates a lot of moisture in the galley, we'll be able to make our meals in the summer without heating up the habitat! 67 comments
 @neauoire super cool :) i remember seeing one of these in a lil feature of this super-inventive nomadic shepard grazing in the usa and being awed by it :> can you take a pic that's a bit farther out and shows how it's set up in general? @neauoire thank u! appreciate seeing the entire thing :> what a perfect addition to pino!  @neauoire don’t forget the advantage of the satisfaction that comes with using fire that you stole from the gods It blows my mind how hot it gets, check out the steam coming out of the vacuum tube- uh oh I angered it    @dx @neauoire itll be useful for us for when at anchor. Even if you do use clean energy tho (bc hydro here too, we have induction plate when at a dock), we see it as redundancy. If your power goes out, you can still cook (provided it is not too overcast). Of course, if the stove is powered by a solar installation at home you can still cook :> (dont know your setup) @rek @neauoire Resilience is a good point. We’re 100% electric and therefore 100% using our camping gear every time the power goes out. No solar, because I ran the numbers and it wasn’t clear that it was the best option from a GHG standpoint given the clean grid power (likely neutral, but then the financials don’t work, and grid tied can’t be used in a power outage with a normal installation anyway)  @vacuumbeef depends on the food inside, but it starts to steam in about 15 minutes. @neauoire I want to try it so much, I just can't get my head around the fact that it's real, haha. I found this pipes in local stores, so maybe this summer... I'm thinking maybe a stainless steel sheet will be good as a diy reflector. @vacuumbeef try it out and document your experiments, I feel like more people should know that it's possible. It's good for when the grid goes down or when LPG runs out. We'll try all sorts of different foods and collect the cooktimes and weather. Soaked dried chickpeas overnight, perfectly solar-cooked in about 1h30. No steam inside the boat, no fuel used. After an hour we re-oriented the reflectors. Next, we'll try rice and bread.  @calutron unlikely, but who knows, it will reduce our consumption of LGP considerably in the short term. I think we're satisfied to have found a way to stretch the length of time we can stay away without refueling, and a bit of redundancy for cooking since our inverter and battery bank are not powerful enough to drive an induction plate.  🌻 I'll stop freakin' out about this soon, promise. Made some pasta sauce(ground beets, tvp, kale, garlic, zataar) and left it out for 45 minutes in the vacuum tube, in the afternoon sun. Turned out so good.  @neauoire every time you post about this i think of the Mr. Wizard's World (80s kids science show) episode where he cooks breakfast on a variety of solar contraptions, including some shiny metallic funnels on sticks! 8 year old me thought it was the coolest, of course, but these vacuum tubes are even more neat. The episode is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bObVFVu_3A @neauoire it's really cool tech, i first found it through Kirstren Dirksen video of a nomadic shepherd (13:30 onward) @lrlna we tried it only once overcast(it has been sunny recently), and it still worked, but it took almost twice as long. @neauoire same concept is used for more industrial power generation using these vacuum tubes filled with oil that would then get used to generate steam I believe as a source of power for turbine electricity generation. You’d have a small field filled with one long long tube in a single closed system. Did one summer internship at a renewable energy research facility and it was fascinating I learned so much.
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@lrhodes that was the first thing we tried :) and yes.   @neauoire  |
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@neauoire today's conditions: 6°C, light wind, sunny :>.