NATURAL PERSPECTIVES:

Vic and I are always looking for ways to live an even greener lifestyle.

Actor and lifelong environmentalist Ed Begley Jr.’s book, “Living Like Ed: A Guide to the Eco-friendly Life,” is providing us with some good suggestions. We already do many of the things Ed does, like composting our green kitchen waste, growing some of our own food and conserving resources. But he had some ideas we weren’t yet implementing.

Ed sometimes cooks with a solar oven to avoid using gas or electricity. That seemed like a great idea. Why not capture the sun’s free rays to do some of our cooking? It avoids heating up the kitchen, and no greenhouse gases are produced.

Many models of solar ovens are available on the Internet, most ranging in cost from $99 to $299. That upper range seemed a bit pricey to me, so I rigged up an essentially free, homemade solar oven, using a Styrofoam packing box with an aluminum-foil-lined cardboard box as an insert. The foil-clad box flaps became the solar reflectors. For a lid to hold in the solar heat, I added a 10 inch by 14 inch sheet of glass to the top of the foil-lined box. You know I have way too much junk in my garage if I can come up with all this material on a lark.

For a pot, I used a black cast iron Dutch oven into which I had put some canned baked beans. I chose the Dutch oven because I thought the black would absorb heat more efficiently than a shiny pan. For a final touch, I popped in my oven thermometer so I could monitor the heating progress.

I’m told one can boil water within an hour in a solar oven. My watched pot never boiled. The temperature inside the box finally rose to 170 degrees Fahrenheit. Considering the air temperature outside was 70 degrees I was reasonably satisfied. After nearly three hours, the temperature remained the same. By this time, Vic was getting hungry for lunch, so I popped the cast iron Dutch oven onto the stove to finish the job. It took only a minute to get the pre-heated beans bubbling.

Undaunted, I modified my solar oven. I cut the box down the sides at the corners to make it shallower. Now the flaps were extra long, the better to collect solar energy. I put a quart of water into my black REI camping cookpot and brought it to a boil on the stove. I added a cup of red lentils along with some sliced carrots, diced Yukon gold potatoes, minced garlic, curry powder, cumin, ginger and bay leaves. I brought the lentil stew to a simmer on the stove and transferred the pot to the remodeled solar oven.

Unfortunately, the temperature inside the solar oven was still only 170 degrees. I added some more aluminum foil to fill in the gaps between the box lid flaps. Now there was a complete circle of foil around the glass top. Amazingly, the temperature started to climb. Soon the temperature inside was more than 190 degrees Fahrenheit. We were cooking on no burners, just using the energy of the sun. Then it was a race to see which would come first — cooked food or sunset. Solar ovens work best when the sun’s rays are beating straight down, not with late afternoon’s slanted rays. Tipping the box to orient it with the sun’s rays only works to a limited degree. Eventually the angle is too much and the food spills.

I’m sure a commercial solar oven would cook better than my jury-rigged foil-lined box. A good solar oven is supposed to get up to 300 degrees Fahrenheit and higher, which is hot enough to ensure food safety. But the price was right for mine. However, we would urge caution in using this method of cooking on anything that might spoil, such as meat products. When in doubt, finish the dish on the stovetop.

The next day, Vic went to the Huntington Beach Public Library to hear an evening of talks on the energy crisis. Mayor Debbie Cook talked about the impending decline of petroleum production and the many steps our city has made to reduce energy consumption. Basically, as the cost of fuel rises, the city is going to be spending more money. I don’t think any of us want to see the cops riding around on motor scooters or the paramedics using pedal power to get to heart attack victims.

After the mayor spoke, Chris Buntine, a representative of Southern California Edison, talked about the many ways homeowners can cut their consumption of electricity and natural gas. Greater efficiency around the house can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and at the same time, of course, save you money. Using a solar oven was not one of the suggestions he made, but he didn’t have time for every possible idea.

There are some changes coming soon in monitoring and pricing of electric service that we’ll cover in another column.

For now, suffice it to say we’re all going to need to learn more about energy conservation if we don’t want to mortgage our homes to pay our electric bills. Buntine said to visit energystar.com for more ideas on energy conservation.

If you have any favorite energy-saving suggestions you’d like to see in the Independent, send them to us at the e-mail address below. Meanwhile, pick up a copy of Ed Begley Jr.’s book and join us on the conservation bandwagon.

VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY are Huntington Beach residents and environmentalists. They can be reached at vicleipzig@aol.com.