To read more on this, check out the book “A Golden Thread,” by Ken Butti and John Perlin. In the late eighteenth century, a European scientist named Horace de Saussure began to explore the ability of glass to capture heat and experimented with “hot boxes.” Research continued through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries including by Samuel Pierpont Langley who went on to become director of the Smithsonian Institute. Like a car on a sunny day, though with much more intention, a solar oven can reach 300☏ enough to cook food and boil and pasteurize water. Going back to the ancient Greeks and Romans we can see examples of how building structures that align with the path of the sun and trap its heat can result in what Pliny the Younger called a heliocaminus or a ”solar furnace.” Greenhouses, solar hot water heaters and solar ovens all work on the same principles, capture the sun’s light rays, convert them to heat waves which are then trapped within the structure and absorbed by the interior materials. Using more direct sunlight, did you know that you can make cakes, soups, and casseroles in solar ovens too? The most prevalent form of solar cooking is dehydrating – think of that bundle of fragrant garden herbs hanging up to dry. Solar cooking is an ancient practice that is easy to learn, somewhat fool-proof and helps preserve many nutrients often lost in conventional cooking methods. Like many have already learned through PV and solar hot water systems, the sun can provide a terrific zero-emission, and free source of cooking fuel. We have another option that works, even here in cloudy upstate New York. Industrial food production aside, at home we use fossil fuels to cook our food coal powered electricity, propane and yes, natural gas. The next key component that deserves our attention is the energy we use to process that food.

These things have all greatly reduced the environmental footprint of our food.

Many have also taken great strides to consciously purchase food with less packaging and bring it home in re-useable bags. Work in many sectors has been done to lower our food miles, the usage of pesticides and herbicides through widespread organic farming and to increase the amount of food that is composted and returned as nutrients to the soil. In our area we are blessed with an amazing local food system.

Golden Thread by Ken Butti