Solar Cooker Experiment #2

Hurrah, another sunny day! Finally, the opportunity to get out the solar cooker for another go.

This time I didn't try anything as adventurous as the bread I did last time (that didn't quite work), I just decided to cook a heap of dried white beans that generally take 45 minutes to simmer on the stove top inside (I soaked them overnight first).

I set up the cooker at about 10am when the sun had come around into the backyard fully, and I stuck the beans in (to be cooked inside the three small black, lidded pots that came with the cooker) at about 11am or so.

I figured they'd take a while to cook, so there wasn't any point in checking it for ages, so apart from reguarly adjusting the mirror to follw the sun, I left the pots in there until about 3.30pm, after I'd finished doing some gardening and I noticed that the dogs had taken interest in it, LOL.

At that point they were still a bit chewy unfortunately, so I put them back in until the sun started getting too low in the sky, at about 5.30pm. Success! Gotta love emission-free cooking :-)

...In other news I've finally found banana plants to buy online!!! There are strict quarantine restrictions on purchasing and growing bananas in northern NSW and all of Queensland, so they are very difficult to get hold of. In fact, I believe that in QLD you need a permit from the DPI to buy and plant them, even in the home garden. Anyway, I am south of the restricted zone - and the commercial growing areas - but banana suckers are still hard to come by down here as it's a marginal growing area. I've seen a couple in local backyards but I spotted them from the main road and it proved difficult to locate the house they belonged to when I started driving around, more's the pity. Anyway, I've ordered one, which should arrive next week, yay! Yes, I do feel guilty that it's being couriered here by truck, but I figure that once it is growing I will be set for bananas for years to come, so that should balance out with the reduced food miles in our family's fruit requirements.

So. We need somewhere to plant it. We have three Giant Bird of Paradise (Strelizia nicolai) in our backyard, the biggest being the one in the pic below. Yep, it looks like a banana, doesn't it? I figure if I have a plant that looks like a banana, I might as well have an actual banana ;-)

So, DH got to work with his trusty pruning saw this morning, chipping the leaves with the electric shredder (yeah, yeah more emissions, sigh) as he went. By lunch time, he'd dealt with about a fifth of it, and had run out of puff! As you can see, it has multiple stems, each over 5 metres (about 17 feet) high (the fence is 6 foot high or 1.8m). He'd dealt with four of them, and there are about a dozen left, yikes! Not to mention the already huge pile of chopped up trunks we can't compost and have to stockpile until the next Council greenwaste collection in May. So, back to the drawing board... We will persist in getting rid of the Strelizia over time, as it is the best position for bananas, but in the meantime I might have to rip out some canna lillies to the left of the above picture and plant it there? Anyway, all Very Exciting, can't wait until it arrives.