Return of the Sun Oven fun!

Now that the weather is warmer and the sun is once again trailing across my back yard, I broke out the sun oven. I've been able to use for two days before it started raining for the next 3. The first day was very sunny and the second was on and off cloudy.

On the partly cloudy day, the temperature in the oven would rise quickly when it was sunny and would cool to about 200 degrees when it got cloudy. I was able to get water boiling hot and cook diced potatoes, carrots and hard boil some eggs. I could have roasted them dry like last year, but I actually prefer the texture of them boiled in water. They came out very nicely, in fact. I also sauteed some onions and garlic in butter and tried to make a frittata, but it was too late in the day to finish. I had to finish the frittata in the toaster oven. Still came out wonderfully! The boiled items took all day to cook since there was no consistent amount of sun.

On the sunny day, the temperature easily broke 300 degrees. I was able to quickly reheat some leftover pasta for lunch, and defrost and heat up some frozen cabbage soup for dinner. For the cabbage soup, I tried something a little different. I aimed the oven for the afternoon sun and didn't readjust after that. I left the oven out until 7PM to see if the soup was still hot. As it turned out, the soup was still warm, but not hot. I had read online that you can leave the sun oven aimed towards the midday sun in the morning before work, go to work, come home and dinner would still be warm and ready. My guess is that you'd have to make it home earlier than 7PM and your dinner would be warm, but not piping hot. Maybe the oven would keep the temperature longer if the weather was hotter. That day, the temperatures were mostly in the 40s. Also, the temperature may have dipped in the afternoon due to condensation building up on the inside the oven glass.

The problem with condensation is that it prevents the sunlight from reaching the cooking chamber and lowers the temperature. Apparently, others have also encountered this problem and I found a post online that offers 3 different solutions. I have yet to try them out, but I plan to the next time we have a sunny day.