Today is Poppy’s Birthday!
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I guess she didn’t really want a picture taken of her on her birthday. (Click the photo to see what I mean. Silly girl.)
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This morning we went for a long walk and later in the day she helped me with my writing.
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Frog
[thumb:206:l] Last night I saw the first frog of the season. It crawled down to the base of the old swiss chard to hide but I got a picture anyway. The old chard is trying to go to seed. I’m going to cut it back today and see if it moves more towards production. Eventually I’m just going to have to take it out to make room for new plants. I’ve got four new clusters in the other box though, so we shouldn’t be without chard this year.
Sun Baked Bread
To start off the day I used the oven to bake egg shells before crushing them up and adding them to the tomato containers. After that I melted chocolate to make some chocolate covered almonds. But the real fun came later after Kate’s sourdough bread was ready to bake. Not knowing how it’d turn out (and not having enough pans right now) we only did one loaf in the oven.
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The oven was up to 350 degrees when we put the loaf in. It dropped a bit after opening the door but that didn’t matter.[newline]
[thumb:203:c]It took awhile, longer than it would baking it in the electric oven, but soon you could see the loaf turning golden.[newline]
[thumb:205:l][thumb:204:l][newline]Finally the bread was done. Just in time too, as it was getting late and the sun was sinking lower in the sky. I had to move the oven a few times to avoid the shadow from the building. Still, the loaf looks great.
More Solar Cooking
Yesterday I made sun-baked cheese sandwiches in the sun oven. They came out nice and hot but probably would have worked better had I preheated the skillets in the oven as well. Today we’re considering baking a loaf of bread in the oven. At the moment I’m baking egg shells to crumble up and use on the tomato plants. The solar oven’s temperature is approaching 350 degrees now. Nice and hot. With the weather so nice I’m thinking of all sorts of things that we can make in the oven.
Some solar cooking resources:
Solar Cooking
Yesterday we used the solar ovens for this first time this year.
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We only reheated the pizza but it came out very good. I should make some individual pan pizzas the next time. The pizza came out nice and hot with a crisp crust. By the time I took the pizza out the ovens where up to 300 degrees.
It looks sunny today, maybe we’ll cook something else?
More planting
I’ve started new seeds today for a new cucumber, sunflower, carrots, and radish.
[thumb:192:l] The new cucumber seed is in the pot. I’ll keep it inside until it gets bigger. Hopefully there won’t be any more freezes.[newline]
More garden pictures
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