Item 1 on the agenda is my solar oven. I built one. I made mine out of 2 cardboard boxes, a couple of newspapers, some tin foil, matte black paint and a piece of clear 1/8th inch plastic that was on a shelving unit in my sewing room. You can see how attractive it is. :) BUT, amazingly enough it works. I put my oven thermometer in there and the temp, so far, has reached 220 degrees F. To go along with my solar oven, I got this great crock pot cook book to maybe come up with some new recipes. I actually got one that has food you would really want to eat in it. The most important fact is that crockpots cook at 180 degrees, so using my solar oven to cook in is perfectly safe. It's also FREE and doesn't heat up my kitchen, which in this house of no central a/c and no insulation is vitally important. It's eco-friendly, made from recycled products and it's pretty damn cool, if you want to know the truth. I've been cooking about 2-3 meals a week in it so far. The only problem I've seen so far is that I have to bring it in when I'm done using it and put it in the sewing room. It's biodegradable. My family thinks it's pretty cool too, hubby asking me when I was going to build a permanent one out of wood. Still thinking on that one. I'd still like it to be made from recycled products, and I'm not sure what to insulate it with yet. I'd love to have one I could leave outside. Next on my hippie list of things to build is this fabulous rocket oven. I figure with the solar oven and the rocket stove I could almost do all my cooking the eco friendly way.
Item 2: Harvesting my onions/garlic. I harvested all my onions and garlic before we went on vacation in June. I got them all cured and ready to go, braided them and hung them from my pot rack. As it cools this fall, I'll most likely move them out onto the covered front porch for storage. The warm temps in the house will shorten 
their storage life. Besides what you see hanging, I have a big basket of the smaller onions and I also took all the very small pearl onions and pickled them. I just couldn't stand throwing any away, and they were really too small to cook with.So that's today's update on what's been going on around here.
Woke up to thunder and rain this morning at 6 or so. Didn't even know we were supposed to get any rain. But they're saying we'll get 1/10th of an inch. Anything is good.
BIG NEWS: The "Half Blood Prince"(Harry Potter) trailer came out last night. Looks really good, and so far, pretty accurate to the book. Now to wait til Novemeber. Also, book release for "Breaking Dawn", the final installment in the "Twilight" series is Saturday. I'll be escorting C and her friend to the local book store for the midnight release party. I just love those! It's pretty cool to be around a whole bunch of people who like books. Just does my heart good.
Deb
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