I’ve been thinking a lot this week about how my kids are big kids! (They aren’t really big kid-big kids but they are big to me.) Julius has started to have big kid problems like friends. He’s been stressing out that he doesn’t have enough friends even though he’s been invited to several playdates and his teacher always tells us he is popular and gets along with everyone. He was actually so anxious about something I said to him about sticking up for kids when they are getting bullied and that I didn’t want my child to be a bully that we had a tearful conversation about it. Poor sweetie. This is my greatest fear, messing up my kids. Everything I say is taken to heart.
Patricia meanwhile is still our little wild thing. She’s been talking about butts and poop a lot and mooning us! Where did this child come from? I guess I’m just glad she has no body shame haha. She’s still the sweetest and loves her brother. Julius finds this frustrating at times but she’s so earnest and her cheerfulness and zest and infectious so he can’t help but be grumpy for long. Yesterday we went to Davis Farmland and Patricia found a classmate from school to play with and Julius told me he was lonely and wanted Patricia to play with him…
So I want to talk about the solar oven today. it worked alright, but I really want to try again to build a better one. It got hot enough to melt crayons (we made new crayons out of broken crayons last Earth day party). Things I was concerned about… I wanted to make it out of cardboard so I made an outer box that I fit an inner box into. Between the boxes I added a bunch of insulation (in the form of tissue paper that I’d saved). Unfortunately I needed to size the inner box to fix nicely in the outer box. But I didn’t know what to use to hold it together. Tape would melt so that was out. I decided to use wood glue – but again is that safe for an oven? I never used it for actual food so I guess it’s fine…. Just in case I used tempura paint for the black inner surfaces of the oven.
The real problem I had with the oven is that the mirrors didn’t stay up properly. A small breeze would topple them over (one shattered). I ended up taping them together so they could hold themselves up.
If I did this again I would use wood and wood fasteners so I don’t have to worry about food safety (as long as the wood is untreated). I’d also make hinges for the “door” of the oven and have a gasket for the door, rather than just plopping a piece of glass on top of the top of the oven. For mirrors I’d probably go with some plastic versions. (I bought absolutely nothing for this solar oven so that wasn’t in the cards this time.) I think I’d have to use better insulation as well.
You can see that the solar oven got up to around 200 when it was melting the crayons. For the crayons I used FSC unbleached, compostable mini baking cups to hold the crayons while they melt. I think they would have come out a bit better if I’d put them in muffin trays (note that everyone says black pots and pans are better than shiny in the solar oven since they will absorb the heat).
