Monday, October 27, 2008

SAMFA Eco Fair 2008 part 2


I cooked my lunch (left over calzone from eating out the night before) in the roaster oven. It is behind the twin steel bowls, so you can't see it in this photo.

I just had water or thermometers in all the other cookers, before lunch. Trying to carry a bunch of food and then carry that hot food home was not something I wanted to do that day.

After lunch, I did cook half strips of bacon in the roaster oven and the twin steel bowls. That was a big hit! The Roaster oven stayed between 225F and 250F, so the bacon would get done in 15-20 minutes. The roaster kept its heat even with my opening it every 20 minutes to pull cooked bacon out and put new in. Oh, I used camping plates for the cooking vessel in these cookers.

Unfortunately, they had me at the top of a slope, so my cookers were not level, and I was too distracted to take this into account. The Cookit variation didn't get the water hot until after lunch, when normally this takes only 90 minutes to get 3 liters of fluids to 150F. Towards the end of the day, it got that 3 liters of water almost to boiling.

The little panel cooker in the front of this photo is based on David Delaney's soda bottle water pasteurizer. Instead of a soda can, I used what I had on hand... a small bottle that contained Starbucks Frappacino, inside a thin cotton black sock. That worked beautifully! The top of the glass bottle was nestled inside the top of the soda bottle, so that I could remove the lid from the 2 liter bottle, pop a thermometer in to measure the temp of the water in the glass bottle, and not loose a lot of heat. This worked so well, that I might consider working with this more to create a water distillation type of unit. (Our city water contains half a ton of minerals, calcium, and salts that my body does not like. I drink lots of distilled or purified bottled water.)

What surprised me was the windshield shade funnel on its side... that kept 8 oz of water (in a camping cup) right at 200F for most of the day! Yes, that isn't much water, but needless to say... I will be using this more at home! It did tip over several times on the grass, so eventually, I set it on the 4 wheel dolly and that worked great. This cooker worked perfect on the slope, so now I know to secure it to a supporting board and lift the end of the board up to mimic the incline of the slope of the hill at the art museum. At 31degrees latitude, this works better laying down, where it works better sitting up like a funnel/cone at other latitudes.

I kept a camping cup of coffee on the table under a glass lid, and this kept the coffee hot for as long as it took to drink it!

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