17345: Pilling: Re: 17339: Minsky: has solar ever been sucessfully used for cooking? (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Sara Pilling <sara.pilling@verizon.net>

This past summer, while visiting Haiti, my good friend, Gertrude, and I had
a long conversation about the use of solar cookers - as she had one, folded
up in her kitchen.

What I heard her say was that Haitians A) eat their main meal at the end of
the day, after working hard and long to buy the aforementioned spoonful of
tomato paste, a few beans, some rice and charcoal. A solar cooker needs to
work while the sun is up - and no one is home. And B} when the family
reassembles, it is already dark - hence, it won't work. Especially so as few
Haitians have [dependable] refrigeration to hold the food they've cooked
solar.

However, she did say that her solar cooker was fabulous as a way to dry
coconut; she'd been able to sell hers to a variety of upscale markets.

Sara Pilling