A solar oven is a worthwhile addition to your prepping strategy without question. While survival foods should be the staple of your food storage to keep you energized, there will be times where you want a home cooked meal both for morale and for a sense of normalcy. Chances are you will have some food in your freezer when things go haywire, and letting this food go to waste when you could cook it as you normally would would be unfortunate.
When you are living on canned sardines and freeze dried staples, those steaks or pizza rolls in the freezer would be much more enjoyable than they normally would. You’ll want to use this food up while you can too. Luckily as someone who takes prepping seriously, you’ll have plenty to fall back on when what’s left in the refrigerator and freezer is no loner an option.
Benefits Of Having A Solar Oven
You might have an abundance of food in your refrigerator and freezer that could get you by if you could only cook it properly. You might even be able to go a whole week before tapping into your stored food cache of canned meats and canned seafood, and that could make quite a difference. Even after that, I will be having some flour on hand, and some canned tomatoes, and I can always make a pizza! It might not have cheese on it, but we will have to improvise.
I personally plan on starting my day with some caloric dense pemmican to get me through most of the day until just before the sun goes down when I plan on cooking some tasty treats on a baking sheet in my solar oven. Every time you open the refrigerator or freezer without power you lessen the lifespan of the food inside, so my solar oven will get most of its use in the first 5-7 days of a grid down scenario.
After that, it will come in very handy if I catch a fish or turn to hunting to try to procure some meat. I’ll definitely have canned meat to fall back on, but something wild caught will be a welcome change if it can be had. I haven’t brought this with me on a camping trip yet because I love cooking over a fire, but I tested it out in my backyard and it worked great. This is such a cool device.
Precautions To Take With A Solar Oven
You should take precautions when using your solar oven, because people will be roaming the streets hungry and their sense of smell when it comes to food will be heightened considerably. If people are desperate for food and starving, if they catch a whiff of what you’re cooking you will have to share some food with them. That might not sound like the worst thing, but now people are aware of what you have going on and you can potentially become a target. Things will get progressively worse before they get better, and you will be on the mind of the people you fed for sure.
Certain foods give off more fragrant aromas, and you might want to have a stash in the back of your freezer of things you can cook that people won’t be able to smell 1/4 of a mile away. I think my trusty pizza rolls fit this bill nicely. Having a weather vane that shows you the direction the wind is blowing might be helpful as well. If all the neighbors are south of you and the wind is blowing gently to the north, that is a good time to cook with the sun.
