I could not wait to get the cooker assembled and bravely tackled the task on my own. It was not too complicated and I only needed a little extra guidance about 3/4 of the way through the process. The whole process took about 45 minutes but I reckon someone more technically minded can get it done in 20mins or less.
The very first chance I got, we set the cooker up outside in a sunny spot and I quickly prepared some ingredients for our first test run.
At first I was worried about what we would use to cook the food in because, from what I heard, suitable (non-aluminium) black pots are hard to come by and a friend of mine who had a solar cooker managed to only find a small black aluminium camping pot which cost R700! I was not prepared to spend any money so decided to start digging around in my kitchen cupboards. I came across my old broken "Sunbeam" wok (think the name is a coincidence?!). This thing broke on me after about the 5th use (electrical connection problem) and this after I already had it replaced once before due to the same fault. The wok 'dish' part was still in perfect nik and luckily I hadn't thrown it out. I turned the pot upside down, unscrewed the plastic base and was left with a great "solar wok pot"! :) The only little issue was the electrical prods that stuck out of the side of the base. Although this made the pot stand slightly skew on the solar cooker base, it was secure enough to work (I'll figure out how to remove those prods later).
So, the wok pot is now on the solar cooker base and my sunglasses are on (a word of warning, never look directly at the sun's glare from any reflective surface as this could damage your eyes). We now positioned the cooker so that it faced the sun and the focal point of the sun reflection was situated underneath the pot.
So, I went back to my work. When I checked on the pot about 20 mins later, I noticed that the sun's reflection was no longer pointed directly underneath the pot so I repositioned the cooker. 15 mins later and again the cooker had shifted. I finally realised that the wind was moving the cooker 'face' from side to side. It turned out that we had forgotten to fit the knob which allows you to tighten the setting to prevent this side to side movement. So now, about 45 mins later, we have the cooker properly set up. The contents of the pot had warmed significantly by this point and was already steaming and tiny bubbles were forming. Not even 10mins later, the contents started to boil. For the next 2 hours and a bit, while the pot simmered, I checked on it about every 20 to 30 minutes and would slightly adjust the settings to the movement of the sun when needed. I also stirred the pot from time to time and added other ingredients when and as needed.
At 13h30, I carefully took the very hot pot off the cooker and brought it inside my kitchen. I then moved the solar cooker into a spot safely away from the sun. I went back inside and opened the lid to a steaming hot pot of delicious sun cooked soup. I served the soup immediately and actually had to blow on it to prevent myself from burning my tongue! The veggies were cooked to perfection!
So, on our first try, perfect solar soup in 3 hours and that included the 45mins in which we did not have the cooker set up properly.
Day 2 - I decided to try and boil 1.5 litres of cold tap water at 08h30 in the morning. It was a sunny day and there was no wind. At 09h03 the pot was boiling! The pot was not even black! It was a standard silver pot with a glass lid.
Immediately afterwards I decided to try and cook some brown rice. 1 cup of brown rice with 2 cups of cold tap water. Start time 09h10, finish time 10h20. Cooked to perfection in 70mins!!
[Note: Although a lot of fun, solar cookers are not toys and should be treated with a similar level of caution and respect as one has when operating a conventional stove/oven.]
