Recapping a Weekend

The dust has settled (mostly) and the guests have all gone home. We have just 3 volunteers remaining (including Brent and Sarah) so life is much quieter. This is good. I didn't quite make it to the end of the 7 posts blogging challenge, but I posted more last week than I had in many previous weeks so I'm going to call it a win.

The kids watching Mwata Kazembe pass by on his litter

Mutomboko was a success this year. For those of you who aren't familiar with the annual tribal ceremony, here are some recaps from some of my very first blog posts: 

Mutomboko 
Mutomboko part 2
Mutomboko part 3

This year the six oldest kids went to the main arena to see the ceremony. They didn't make it to the very end since it ran late and they needed to come home for dinner, but they enjoyed what they saw and it was a good experience for them. It's so interesting to watch them grow up. The same kids who cried the first year and were frightened by the musket fire are now old enough to enjoy the festival fully.

We had a total of 25 people with us for dinner Friday and Saturday nights. I stuck with our traditional menu of Chili and Cornbread for Friday and then of course Saturday we had the Pit-Roasted Pork served with Spanish Rice and Coleslaw. For dessert was Addictive Youngstown Chips (or as I like to call them: Everything But the Kitchen Sink Cookies) and Texas Brownies. It was all excellent! (or so I've been told. Heh)

Our sun ovens came in handy this year. We cooked the 8 pounds of beans in the sun ovens before finishing the Chili on the stove. The next day we slow-cooked the barbecue sauce all day in the sun ovens which meant I didn't have to worry about stirring it at all, and the flavors developed beautifully. For Saturday lunch we 'boiled' 30 eggs for lunch sandwiches. It only took 2 hours and they were cooked perfectly. No gas or electricity required at all. Wonderful!

We did our pig just as we have for the past several years. This was our seventh year in a row! I have nearly gotten over the anxiety that something might go wrong and that it won't get done properly or on time.
For a step by step post you can read it here. This was the largest pig ever! Forty-seven kilos! That's over 100 pounds of pig. Of course by the time it was roasted, and the fat had cooked off, and it was then deboned, there were only 12 kilos (26 pounds) remaining. That was one fat mama pig.

A funny thing to note is that I cannot stand pork. True story. I also don't care much for BBQ sauce. And yet year after year I prepare massive pots of BBQ pork. I have to wait for others to tell me if it's OK because I honestly think it tastes awful. Yet year after year I'm told it's some of the best barbecue sauce and/or pork people have ever tasted. Strange but true! 

For breakfast on Sunday morning I served Pioneer Woman's Cinnamon Rolls which are a wonderful way to end a weekend with friends. They all leave devoted to you and swearing eternal love--which is just as it should be. 

Moriah--yep, she's got swag!

Sun Kissed Bread

Last week I told you about our solar ovens. We are just as excited as can be about using our sun ovens because now we've learned how to make bread in them. 

Can you imagine? Eating bread that cost you only what you had to spend on ingredients? It's like magic!

Our friend Gail was part of the team of volunteers that came out in July. Her special project with us was to teach us how to bake bread using whole wheat. To accomplish this, she brought with her a home mill and a Bosch mixer.

We bought a 50 lb sack of whole wheat and within minutes the mill had produced fluffy flour with every last bit of the grain included. No sifting out the bran, no chunky bits. It was bread-ready in what seemed like mere moments.

During the month that Gail was here she baked scores of loaves of bread--all different types--and they were so delicious. After she left, we had trouble with the transporter who brings our gas bottles from Lusaka so we quit baking to conserve energy. Now with solar ovens at our disposal we were raring to go!

Trouble was, we had forgotten exactly how Gail had done the process. I've baked bread before but my process involved a lot of kneading and adding flour. The beauty of the Bosch mixer is you can work with a much softer dough for better results.

Tom and I got started one morning using the cookbook Gail left behind. I handed him ingredients and he dumped them in. At the end we had a very soft gloopy dough. I admit to crying a bit at this point. Not knowing what else to do, we put them in the baking pans, left them to rise and then when the dough had doubled in size we put them in the sun ovens.

After an hour, the bread had risen even more and looked good. We used a matchstick to create a gap between the glass and rubber seal to let out some of the moisture (which slows down the heat by stopping some of the reflectivity), but it looks like we may need a bigger matchstick.

For some reason the bread didn't come out perfectly. We had 2 loaves in each of two of the ovens and 1 in another. The single loaf came out alright. The others had height and tasted OK, but the tops had sunk in.

We were a little disappointed. We even left two of the loaves in for over 4 hours trying to get them to turn out better. They were definitely more cooked but still didn't have that lovely domed top.

The bread tasted so good we were determined to give it a try the next day. This time, after we added all the ingredients, we let the mixer keep going for 5 more minutes. We then left the bread in the bowl to rise for 30 minutes, patted it into five loaves, set them in bread pans and let them rise a second time for 30 minutes. The bread felt much better as I worked with it and when it had risen the second time, the tops were gloriously high.

We also angled our ovens a bit better to catch more rays and only placed one loaf in each oven at a time. After only 2 hours the bread had baked perfectly!

We're kinda bad scientists because we changed so many variables at once so we don't know what didn't work, but we sure know what did work. Take a look at the fruit of our labors! And, remember, this is from solar energy! Free energy! Can't beat that!

Exactly One Year Ago: Fab Friday Foto--Mofwe Lagoon sunset

Baby, It's Hot Outside

It seems like, for the past couple months, every other Facebook entry was talking about this unusually hot summer everyone has been experiencing. We haven't been experiencing quite the same heat wave since we have winter this time of year. But, since we can swim year-round the sun is our constant companion for better or worse. 

One of our biggest goals as orphanage directors is to find ways to keep our operating costs down and provide the most reliable services. Up until recently our options for cooking were electric or natural gas energy. Many times the electricity was out or too low a current to operate an electric stove. Natural gas is a natural (sorry) solution, but the only problem is that we have to bring the bottles up from Lusaka. We have a transporter that we work with, but he is not always reliable. Our final option is charcoal but this is a serious cause of deforestation in this country and we really try to avoid using this option.

One compact package

Tom has been researching using solar energy and has even worked on his own design but found it difficult to come up with the raw materials. This was why he got very excited when he found a company called Sun Ovens. They are a small company that builds portable solar ovens that are affordable. The ovens are so portable that they can be taken on as luggage on a plane. That's how we got them over here. Our latest team brought them with them as check in luggage.

Very portable for packing,carrying & storing when not in use.

I was skeptical, but like a good wife I listened and supported Tom in this new idea. Then, after we had ordered the ovens and were just waiting for the team to bring them over, I came across an email with a link to this blog post. I got very excited about the possibilities. Tom just rolled his eyes and said, "But that's what I've been telling you for months". I guess I had to hear it from a woman. LOL

  

We ordered pots and bread tins with our ovens and all that packed right into the oven for easy transport.

It's fun to have these space-age looking contraptions sitting in our driveway.

The oven gets up to between 300 and 350 degrees (Fahrenheit) after just 30-60 minutes in the sun

 

 

Our first 'meal' was a vegetable stew. We threw a few veggies and some beef stock into the little pots and within a few hours everything was cooked and delicious. There is a bit more work involved with a solar oven than in using a crock pot or slow cooker since the sun oven needs to be moved every 30 minutes for optimum heat but, as Tom says, "The food tastes better when it's free".

I've cooked chicken, curries, soups, lentils, cakes and more in the sun oven. My cakes still need tweaking (remember the Dr. Suess cake?), but I'm looking forward to the experimenting and practicing. I'll let you know how things go.

Do you think you would ever consider using a solar oven? I never thought I would, but this is an exciting chapter in the Adventure of My Life.

Sun Ovens is not paying for this review. We did get a non-profit discount, but this review is completely my own opinion because I simply LOVE saving money.