An "F" in Earth Day

I try hard, really I do. I'm conscientious, and frugal, and eco-friendly. I ride the bus and hang laundry on the line. We eat very little meat. (Go ahead and hum the tune to In Our Lovely Deseret . . . there's a line that applies.) We recycle, and I get up early in the morning just to turn off the hall light el Roberto leaves on to keep the children from freaking out at night. (Note to beloved spouse: it doesn't work; they still freak out!) I've considered myself for many years now to be a good steward to the earth.

So, for Earth Day I thought I'd be extra kind to the planet and cook our dinner using my trusty solar oven. Great idea! Even better: make it a vegan solar-cooked meal! Yes! I am sooooooo getting little green points for this.

I started early. I was going to make beans, and they have to be soaked overnight unless I want to boil them for extra hours--and that would take electricity. Electricity bad on Earth Day. So I soaked. Great! One step closer to bean heaven. Then, on the fateful morning I drained and rinsed my beans, put them in my handy solar oven pot, added tomatoes and chilies and some water, plopped it all in the solar cooker. Now the hard part: I dragged a table out to the driveway (our backyard is too shady to do this anymore. Shade is good for backyards, but hard on solar cookers), set the cooker on top, lifted the reflective flap, oriented it to the sun, and ran back into the house to get on with the day. (Also to escape the proof that was 7 a.m. and pushing 90 degrees!) Through the day I carefully repositioned the cooker--making sure it was getting all the sunlight it could get. The sides felt hot, and heat was definitely building up inside. OH, this was going to be good! Call me Mommy Nature!

5 p.m. rolled around, and I ran eagerly out to the driveway to collect our cuisine de sol. Yum, yummy! What's this? Still not cooked? Raw? Unpalatable? There wasn't enough heat to do the job? In ARIZONA???????

Long story short: too long since we last used it, insulation worn down, leaky heat seals. Wasted effort.

We ate frozen pizza, hot from the electric oven.