Alternate Cooking Sources

Alternate Sources for cooking without power, or using little power, that's what I want to share with you today. I have done a bit of research on some of these different ideas, because even though I know and understand them, my actual hands on experience with some of them is limited. I use my Wonder-box all of the time, and I use my dutch ovens once in awhile. I have buddy burners, and camp stoves, and all that stuff, but I realized that I need some more practice and experience with some of these others. Therefore, I have listed lots of links with great ideas and I have decided to incorporate some of these projects into our home school this year. Once a week we do a project and my theme this year is to teach my kids survival skills and other useful skills they will need some day, and these alternate cooking forms definitely fall into that category. So.........here we go!

A side note, most of these things that I have listed links for, can totally be built with very little money. You can surely purchase a nice solar oven for three or four hundred dollars of you want, and they will work great, but if you are like me, that just isn't in my budget, so lets figure out other ways to save money and power, and also to cook without power.

Wonder Cookers – what a great little invention. I use mine often,(I actually have three) but probably should use them more, and as I have been doing some looking into recipes and what not, I am inspired to experiment with them more. I know that we can use them for cooking OR keeping things cold. I have used it to bring home a frozen turkey from my dad's once and then I forgot about it in my jeep for about 30 hours, and when I went to get it, the darn thing was still frozen!!! Pretty cool hey? I use mine every time we have a family dinner and we have to travel because it will keep things hot or cold for several hours. We have taken freezies and popsicles to soccer games on a hot day and they stay nice and frozen. If you put something hot in it, the food will continue to cook, but it never seems to burn or over cook. As I use it more over the next little bit, I will post some of my thoughts and recipes of what I do.

Heat Retention Cooking A great site that talks about cooking with heat retention, basically bringing your food up to temp using some form of heat, and then using hay box or wonder-box to cook it from there on

Wonder Box Cooker A really good site with step by step instructions on making one and cooking with it

Wonder Box Cooking Step by step instructions again for cooking meat in the wonder-box

Making a wonder box cooker Step by step instructions for making a wonder-box

Wonder Box Patter pdf

Cooking Without Power Recipe Book An excellent pdf recipe book for cooking without power, using wonder-box, apple box oven, and dutch oven

I have never made an apple box oven or a solar funnel cooker, but they are projects that are at the top of my list. I will keep you posted as I do them. But follow the links for some great sites.

BYU PDF A great pdf about making an apple box cooker, a hay cooker, paper box oven, solar funnel cooker

Cooking without power If you follow this link and look on the left hand side of the page, you will find a wealth of information on cooking without power using all different kinds of methods

Solar Cooker Plans to build your own solar funnel cooker and what to do with it

I love dutch oven cooking!

I love camping too and that is usually when I do this kind of cooking. There is something about the taste of it that is just fabulous. I really should do it more often, but of course time is a factor, because it is something that you do have to watch a bit closer to not burn it or burn something else. Check out these sites with great info and great great recipes

Dutch Oven Cooking Really good site and info about dutch oven cooking.

Dutch Oven Dude Tons of dutch oven recipes. Really good

Hope these ideas all help to inspire you to get creative and experiment with some alternate cooking sources. Really, I think we should have it all figured out before the time comes when we HAVE TO use it, then it won't be a hardship at all, we will just move calmly into that mode. Good luck and I would love to hear your stories.