Solar Baguette

For supper last night, I had leftover mac'n'cheese, which was so bland that I put some spaghetti sauce on it, with a piece of baguette.

So why am I posting about such a boring supper? Because the baguette was baked in a solar oven!

The wife loves camping. I did, too, until my COPD reached the point that I can no longer tramp the woods easily and the pollens and moulds interfere with my breathing. So, now she goes camping and I stay home and take care of the dog (and the blog!). But, anyway, she has a van, all tricked out as a camper. She already has an oven that sits on top of the burners of her camp stove, but in order to save on propane costs, she recently bought a solar oven.

It's a fascinating device. It consists of a long metal 'trough' that goes inside an optical glass tube. That entire assembly sits at the focal point of a parabolic mirror to focus the sun's rays.

It works quite well. It baked delicious bread and earlier today she baked an apple in it. She has little silicone cups that fit in the trough for things that needed to be kept together. She's going to experiment with cooking beans when the sun comes out again, which of course, highlights its major drawback. You can't cook at night or if it's cloudy.

Here's a picture of the bread:

And here is the apple in the little silicone cups, with the end of the tube.