A solar oven is a worthwhile addition to your prepping strategy without question. While canned foods should be the staple of your food storage to keep you energized, there will be times where you need 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 change on a dime, 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 pizza rolls in the freezer would be much more enjoyable than they normally would.
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, and that could make quite a difference. 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.
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. 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.
