Cooking with the Sun

Sun Oven International
The sunny Eugene weather is ideal for cooking with my sun oven. I got this Sun Oven International from Alternative Power Ent. when I worked there. We'll see how many days the rest of the year will be good for sun cooking in Eugene! I've made rice, beans, soups, curry dishes, stir fried veggies, bread, brownies, apple crisp. . . .anything is possible! Noel made my custom casserole dish to maximize the interior volume, the dark glaze helps retain the heat, and can make enough soup for many meals. I've also been playing with what to cook while I'm at the studio all day. In the morning I put all the soup ingredients in the casserole dish, set up the sun oven to face south, then let is slow cook throughout the day. This has worked really well, but need to add a bit more water to rice so it doesn't dry out. But things will never burn because the moisture is retained within the sealed cooking box.


When the sun goes down, or doesn't even appear we can the cook more with our wood fired cob oven in the back yard. Here Noel is cooking a pizza, takes about 30 seconds- 1 minute depending on how hot the fire is in the back.
Build your own! lots of resources available for Cob Ovens or also known as Earthen Ovens

Eugene House

1960 Grant St.
Here is some information on the sweet rental house I live in! It's a renovated ranch style house 2.5 miles from the U of O campus. It's nice to have a longer bike commute since often it's the only time to be outside on those busy studio days!

New parts of the house:
Skylights in the kitchen and studio space
American Clay Plaster walls and ceilings
Lime Plaster bathroom with cob partitions
Wood burning stove for heat
Big back porch half covered, half not
Materials from BRING Recycling Center, even an old gym floor as the new flooring of the house
Earthen floor in the kitchen, very durable, but also soft to sand on compared to concrete. One of my aunts vases blew off the window sill and didn't break on the floor.
Wood fired outdoor cob oven
Gardens raspberries, tomatoes, peas,
Fruit trees including apple, pear, peach, a fig and 2 kiwis!