Solar Cooker

Weston had been asking me to help him make a pizza solar cooker for a few weeks.  I had no idea what he was talking about, so I had to ask him where he saw the solar cooker.  He told me that he saw it on Curious George, and he explained how they cooked a pizza in the sun (it was actually lasagna). I wanted more information on the topic, so I tried to locate the actual episode about the solar cooker.  Eventually, I found the episode, but wasn't able to watch it on the internet unless I paid for it. However, on the same day, the solar cooker episode aired on TV!!! What are the chances of that happening??!!! So, after watching the episode, we went to Little Caesars and picked up a couple of pizza boxes.  We made our solar cookers that day, but it wasn't warm enough to try it out. We decided to wait for our next warm and sunny day. I wished he had seen this show in the summer when we were having 100+ temperatures outside!! Yesterday, Weston stayed home from school because he was sick. It was going to be sunny and warm, so we decided to use that time to try out our cooker.  I had my doubts about it working after doing a little research on the topic, but I was excited to test it.  The simple solar cooker that we made was supposed to be better for warming precooked  foods, such as hot dogs.  Weston really wanted to cook a pizza, but I knew that it would  really difficult. I usually cook our pizza on 450 in the oven.  Yesterday, it was in the lower 70s. So, I found another recipe that I thought would be easier to cook in the sun than pizza. We made an peanut butter cookie dough that was supposed to be a good recipe for the solar cooker.  I was hopeful about the cookies, but not the pizza.

Putting together our pizza cooker

We butted heads while we were making the cooker.  I ended up putting him in time out over it!  He was insisting that I make it a certain way, but his way wasn't the correct way to build it .  After Nathan and I explained to him why it wouldn't work, he would not stop arguing about it.  He landed himself in timeout for being disrespectful:(

This is a brief description of how it works!

 Our Experiment:

It is time to try out our solar cooker!

First, we had to preheat our ovens.

While the ovens were preheating, we made pizza!

Time to cook the pizza!

This boy is having too much fun on a sick day! 

Making peanut butter cookie dough.

We placed our cookies in the oven!

Now, we have to wait!!!

 

 

A few hours later...

The plastic wrap had collected steam from the pizza, and the pan was warm!  However, it never cooked our pizza!

My sick boy sleeping.  I thought about cooking the pizza in the oven and slipping it back in the box while he slept.  I left the pizza in the box, and figured I better tell him the truth!!  At least it will give us a reason to try it again in the summer. He was not disappointed at all.  He knew that it was not hot enough for it cook.  I think he was more excited about building the box more than anything!

The cookies were warm, but they never baked completely.

Our solar pizza. The cheese was slightly melted, but that was it!!

 

 

Luckily, I saved some extra pizza dough and made pizza in the oven!!!