Apricots

A picture of a lug of apricots! They were 20 bucks. From Stanislaus County. They're called "ruby red" but i haven't found any information on this type of apricot at all. Maybe the farmers made the name up hoping to trademark it or something.

I also like the way they vary in color when they are laid out on the table like this.

Apricot is the champagne of jams, or is that an appropriate analogy? The queen of stone fruits?

On the windowsill are garden tomatoes... they are all we have from 5 plants all week but they are ripening rapidly as we pass summer solstice.

Solar Powerhouse

I am really impressed by this global solar oven that i just got. I took her for her maiden voyage today, just by boiling some water as a test. In a word, this thing is powerful.

It is the day after summer solstice at 38 degrees latitude, so this thing is really cranked up to the max.

It has metal reflective wings that collapse, focusing a greater area of solar radiation than its size into the box. It has a carry handle and looks like it will last 20 years. It's made of quality wood and metal with a "made in america" quality. And it features a swinging bench to hold your cookware level no matter how you have the thing tilted to catch solar radiation. In winter you set up an adjustable leg in the back of the oven to aim more toward the horizon. I found it on ebay from a reseller, about $225.

I started a 500ml erlenmeyer flask of 10-15c cold water at 1pm, with no preheat. At 2pm, the beaker was already boiling steadily as shown, the temperature inside the box was 150c. By 4pm it had boiled away 40ml and it was 145c inside the oven. Intense. My math may be wrong but that means between 2-4pm i got around 90,000 joules or 25 Watts?

This is more energy than the SOS sport solar cooker which works more like a crock pot. Since it's gentler I will use this one for cooking food slowly like while i'm at work. It has a different design which makes it a different style of cooker. Testing it now as a fruit dehydrator... A clothespin holds the lid of the SOS slightly ajar so it stays about 80c in there.

The SOS also is wonderful because every one you buy actually buys two, one for you and one for someone in a refugee camp somewhere in the world. So you probably are saving trees while you help win the war on natural gas. Truly a win/win situation.