Encouragement for Christian Sisters

Hello sisters in Christ! I pray your day is joyous in the Lord and you are striving on in obedience in love of the Father. Today I want to share with you about making soup stock in the solar cooker (sun oven, solar oven, whatever you call it:-)  You can see mine  HERE  and what we do with it. It gets up to almost 250 degrees on a sunny day as long as I rotate it accordingly so I can do quite a bit with that sort of temperature. One day I decided to make chicken soup stock in it and it turned out great!  I just put the bones in a black cast iron dutch oven, covered them with water and let the sun cook it all day.  The result was an awesomely rich broth.  Once it was done I picked out the bones and added a handful of dehydrated veggies and a package of noodles and let it sit for an hour.   Turns out most of the stock got soaked up by the dry foods :-) but it made a great meal. I also experimented with something today, pan cookies.  I've made bread in p

Greetings sisters in Christ!   Rejoice with me in this day the Lord has given us to glorify His name! We have been very busy, praise God, and are getting a lot of work done around here.  We are so thankful for the opportunity. Bother Jim cut me a bunch of cedar chunks to split for my cedar bin because cedar is great for blasting the wood stove when I cook on it. He taught me how to use the big ax with minimal effort.  (He had the minimal effort :-)   I can only do a small amount at a time but it won't be long and it will be full.  One day at a time, a little here and a little there and it all adds up.  I learn a lot of patience as I get older and struggle through trials but it makes me appreciate it all the more. So in a previous post I mentioned how years ago  we made a solar cooker (sun oven, whatever you want to call it) from recycled materials and guess what?  We did it again!  I had mentioned it to brother Jim and one day he brought out a round piece of glass th

Hello Sisters! I thought you might be interested in seeing what we used for a solar hot water heater in the summer when we were on our little homestead.    Another post from my past homestead blog... ****************************************************** Who doesn't like saving money?  In a previous post I mentioned how I do all our cooking on the woodstove in the wintertime thereby saving our propane or electricity depending on what appliance I would otherwise use.  I also always have a pot or two of water on the woodstove for washing dishes or clothes but when the warmer months come, I long for a simple money saving way to heat water....enter the solar water heater. We like to use what we already have (if possible) with the next step being that we will check out thrift stores or bargain shops before purchasing new. In making this hot water heater we used 2 (of the many) barrels that we were given (free) as well as some hose we already had and 1 hose we purchased at a thr

Greetings sisters, Here's another post from my blog...solar cooking. ************************** It's spring and although we still have the woodstove going, it's fun to use the solar oven when you have a sunny day.  It started out sunny today but turned cloudy later on so I'm impressed on how the solar cooker heated the food despite the cold wind, 40 degree, party cloudy day!  I just took a chicken breast and chunked it up, added cubed potatoes and some peas.  Toss it with a generous dose of olive oil and a sprinkle each of thyme, sage and oregano as well as a generous helping of garlic salt a 1/2 cup water and we're ready to go. Just a note: at this time of year in Wisconsin with the weather being very cool and an even cooler wind, it's wise to use smaller pieces of food to ensure full cooking until the weather warms up and the temps in the solar oven can get higher.  I did give it a jump start on the gas stove for 10 minutes, just bringing it to a

Hello sisters, I found this post from my old blog that shows our homemade solar cooker and thought you might find it interesting. **************************************** In a world that is fast paced everything, we love living our home life in a simple and uncomplicated way.  Yes, we do use modern conveniences but as we go through our daily lives we look for ways to do things the 'old fashioned' :-) way or by using the resources that God has given us, thereby saving us money as well as a growing appreciation for the conveniences that we do have. In the wintertime I cook most of our meals in cast iron cookware on the woodstove (which is our source of heat).  It's not only economical (free) to cook that way but it's also fun and can be quite challenging.  In the warmer part of the year when the woodstove is not going, I try to use our solar oven as much as possible, which is not as often as I'd like as it all depends on the sun and lack of cloud cover. Aft