SoapStandle

SoapStandle, the NEW handy and eco-friendly tool that is changing the bar soap industry!

For many people, bar soap is a thing of the past. Most of us have switched over to liquid soap to avoid the soap goo that is left behind when you finish using a bar of soap. But if the goo is eliminated, bar soap becomes a viable option for many people – and that’s where SoapStandle steps in!

Made of recyclable acrylic, SoapStandle sinks its “teeth” into bar soap to create a platform on which the soap is elevated. Since air can circulate 360° around the soap when it is not being used, the soap is able to shed water and dry properly so that that pesky soap goo never develops.

Ergonomically designed as an oval to act as a handle so soap doesn’t slip out of your hand, SoapStandle helps extend the life of bar soap by 30%! SoapStandle comes in a pack of 2, for $8.00.

My Thoughts:

Ironically I discovered SoapStandle right after I had purchased a brand new soap dish for the bathroom. One thing that runs out quickly at home is soap. Whether it is melting, oozing, or falling down the drain, we are constantly buying new bars and liquid soap all the time. That can make up a large bill at the end of the month, as well as produce a lot of waste. 

SoapStandle is not only an innovative product, but one that helps us take into consideration our carbon footprint. It allows soap to last longer, requiring us to purchase less soap and plastic. Use it anywhere soap is needed from the bathroom, shower, kitchen, anywhere! 

If you're looking for a creative and inventive new product to make your life and budget easier, get a SoapStandle today! 

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Review: Solavore TR-86 High Performance Reflector

Solavore TR-86 High Performance Reflector
 

NEW!

Bring on the heat with Solavore’s powerful new TR-86 Reflector. Its mirror-like surface – 86% Total Reflectance - means faster preheat, higher oven temperatures, and increased range for partial-sun days.

• Great for baking. Cook year-round - even up north, far from the sunbelt
• Weather and tarnish resistant surface, a finish that will stay looking new for years, thanks to anodizing that hardens and coats the aluminum
• Detachable, folds flat. Includes carry case for safe storage when not in use
• Made in the USA
• Save $17 and get free shipping when purchased with your Solavore Sport

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Our Thoughts
I reviewed the Solavore Sport Solar Oven a few months ago (read my original review here) and I have to say, I still love it and continue to use it - it will definitely see the most use in the summer so I don't have to use my traditional oven and heat up the house! 

It has been frustrating though, to not be able to use it in the winter months - for about a month before, and a month after, the winter solstice.  Not the fault of the solar oven by any means, just a sad combination of our specific location in town with surrounding buildings, trees, and the low position of the sun in the sky.  Our backyard gets plenty of ambient light during the day, but not enough direct sun so there's not enough time to cook foods for the longer periods the solar oven requires.  So as you can imagine, when Solavore offered me the chance to try out the new TR-86 high performance reflectors I jumped at it because the new reflectors capture more of the sun's rays for winter performance.

So this beautiful shiny thing arrives . . . and I kid you not, we then had like 2 weeks of overcast days, snow, and fog.  The news said at one point 51 straight hours of FOG.  That wasn't even the end of the fog though. Ridiculous. And certainly not conducive to solar cooking!

For a comparison, this is the "old" reflector that came with my Solavore Sport - definitely reflective and helpful for solar cooking.

Now compare the new TR-86 Reflector - much shinier; a higher reflective surface:





Finally the weather cooperated and we had a day of SUN! Awesome.  Great, now what to cook?  Hmm.  Let's try some muffins. This recipe is straight out of my own paleo cookbook which I believe you can read about in my profile on Blogger (if you wish!). It's a nut flour based recipe since we are grain-free, and the base recipe is very versatile and has served me well over the years - one I know to work well with a variety of different added ingredients.  For this one, I made a cinnamon spice muffin with dried fruits.  I started pre-heating the oven at about 9:30am, when the first sliver of morning sun came up over the house and hit the far west side of our backyard.  The outside temp was 9F.  The muffins went in the oven about 10:30am.  I did have to move the oven a couple of times to keep it in direct sunlight but it's not heavy, and the smooth bottom slides nicely over the snow.

The oven temp with the TR-86 Reflector was about the normal temp I'd expect during the warmer months without using a reflector, about 225F. 

The recommended baking time is 90 minutes, and the temp inside the oven was steady. You can see the condensation building up in this photo.

I did open the oven to check the done-ness of the muffins and decided they weren't quite done yet.  Just be aware that opening the solar oven during a frigid day (remember the outside temp was 9F!), it will lose some heat and need more time for the sun to bring it back up to the required temp.

Overall, the muffins took about 2 hours to bake until they got as done as I like them.  Much longer than the 20 minutes in my (gas) oven, so you know, have patience!  Their consistency/texture was a little different than traditional cooking - wetter, chewier. I will try this again during the warmer months when I can get the oven temp up a little higher.  (Don't let the solar oven get over 300F or warping may occur.)

Next up - with the success of the muffins, I thought I'd try a cake.  Well, it didn't start out as a cake.  Really I just wanted to make a sauce.  But then I kept adding stuff to it and it ended up as a cake. (That's rather how I cook anyway, adding stuff here and there and the end result doesn't always resemble what my first intent was!)

This one failed for three reasons:

1. I think it's because I used my own cooking pot, which has a blue lid, rather than the black lids that come with the pots that come with the solar oven.  I think a black lid would have absorbed more light.

2. While I can throw together a muffin recipe without actually using a recipe - just been doing it long enough I'm used to it - I don't think I got the ratio of ingredients quite right since solar baking involves more moisture during the baking process. Something to work on.

3. Weather.  Granted it was mostly sunny out (there were some clouds), but we also had high winds - in the 20-30mph range.  The solar oven, even with the TR-86 Reflector, had trouble keeping the temps up enough for baking.  It was at about 180F, which will cook your roasts fine if you cook them all day, but trying to bake in the winter, well, not so much.  I ended up scooping out the batter into a muffin tin and finishing it in my gas oven.

I tried to put in some halved acorn squash in the black pots after I gave up on the cake but again, with the high winds, there was not enough warmth and certainly not enough direct sunlight time to get the squash more than lukewarm. 

Seeing what the temps and weather conditions needed to be for successful winter solar cooking, and the time frame we actually have direct sunlight in the backyard - I decided not to try a roast - there just wouldn't be enough time of direct sunlight - not yet.  Soon though . . . another few weeks or so and the sun will be much higher in the sky and I can get back to it.  (As a side note, we are moving to the country this year (building a house) and out at our new property - I won't have to worry about having enough direct sunlight because we aren't surrounded by buildings - plenty of open space to soak up all the sun's rays, all day long.)

The last test I did with the TR-86 Reflector, was chocolate chip cookies (almond flour based).  I knew with the moisture content inside the solar oven the cookies would turn out chewy and soft.  Not crispy, like my husband likes them.  Haha, more for me!

I didn't have a cookie sheet small enough to fit inside the solar oven so I just used the pots (uncovered) it came with. I was able to fit 14 cookies inside the two 10" pots.

Now, our crazy weather had changed enough in the last couple of weeks - we went from frigid temps to, well, nice out. But this gives me an idea on how well the new reflectors perform in warmer temps.

You can see the snow's already melted, that's how nice it was out - in the 40-50F range. 

The cookies really didn't take too long to bake, about 90 minutes. With the combination of the outside weather and the new reflectors, the solar oven temp reached about 275F.  The cookies turned out awesome. Chewy, delicious, perfect, and best of all, I didn't have to share!

Holiday Gift Guide: Solavore Sport Solar Oven

The Solavore Sport Solar Oven may look like a plain black box, but looks can be deceiving. Years of engineering experience and testing went into designing the Sport’s base, boosting its functionality on multiple levels.

The Solavore™ Sport was purpose-built by solar-cooking experts for maximum efficiency, durability, and ease of use. Weighing 9 pounds and measuring 12 ¼” high by 27 ¼” long by 17” wide, the Sport is lightweight and portable. Oven temperatures typically range from 210º – 260º F, maxing out at 300º F. In other words, hot enough for slow-cooked goodness (food cooks starting at 180º F) but not hot enough to burn dinner. It simmers like a crock pot and bakes like an oven.

The Sport solar oven is very popular among campers, preppers, outdoor enthusiasts, bikers, sailors, and those in the LOHAS demographic, etc. They are used to cook a broad range of delicious food including meat, poultry, vegetables, fish, slow cooked meals and baked goods, without using cooking fuel of any kind other than sunlight. The Solavore Sport oven also pasteurizes water and dehydrates food. 

You can literally "set it and forget it" and go about your busy day. The food will be perfectly cooked when you return. Kids when using it get a science lesson on solar energy while enjoying the many fun children's recipes. They also won't get burnt or get their fingers pinched in the aparatus of this kid friendly solar oven. 

Designed by engineers from 3M, the Solavore Sport is a virtually indestructible, retained-heat box-type solar oven made of rugged, durable, lightweight injection-molded nylon resin. Surround insulation and two-pot capacity enable unattended, family-size year-round cooking. The Sport solar oven is an industry leader in price, performance, family-size capacity and rugged durability.

Every Solavore solar oven purchased in the developed world helps to fund a Solavore Sport somewhere in the developing world where an open fire is still the main kitchen appliance. Over 20,000 Solavore Sport ovens have been deployed in 60 countries. The benefits that Solavore Works, Solavore's corporate social responsibility program, brings to communities in the developing world include:

• Respiratory health: freedom from common diseases such as pneumonia, which kills more than 3 million people a year around the world due to indoor cooking fires
• Water pasteurization and food dehydration
• The removal of one of the main causes of deforestation in the developing world, the continuous chopping of firewood
• Savings in energy expenditures, which can range up to 25-50% of a family's budget
• The ability for girls to attend school rather than spend their days collecting firewood and venturing further and further away from home to do this
• Increased income generation, enabling a woman to sell the excess food that she bakes or dehydrates in her solar oven 

Mission
Solavore is a women-owned business promoting clean-cooking technology around the world.

The preparation of food using heat is the most elemental of human endeavors. Cooking sustains our bodies, nourishes our souls, unites us around a common hearth. In a world of infinite richness and variety, cooking is a common thread stretching across time and cultures.

At Solavore™, we believe that cooking fuel should be healthy and as abundant as sunlight.

We build ovens that make clean-cooking fun, easy and liberating.

We build ovens that will be game-changers for women who risk their lives every day gathering wood or burning it, simply to feed their families.

Every oven purchased gets us one step closer to putting out a wood-fuel fire somewhere in the world.

Let's get outside and cook.

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Our Thoughts
I have been wanting a solar oven for a long time, so as you can imagine I was (and still am!) ridiculously excited to receive the Solavore Sport Solar Oven (with reflectors) for review.  Our cabin is off grid, and for the house we are planning to build next year we hope to have as much energy savings as we can. 

Summer/early fall has been a perfect time to try out the solar oven - we don't have central air in our current home by choice but during the heat of the summer, cooking indoors just serves to heat up the house further (as well as adding to our energy bill). And of course there are days where I do A LOT of cooking and often wished I had more than one oven.

Here's the setup:

You get the oven + lid, two Granite Ware 10" pots, an oven thermometer, and reflectors. 

  

Easy to assemble - because there really isn't any assembly required: just put the oven in an area that receives full sun during the day, fill a pot or two with yumminess and place inside the oven, place the oven lid on top and use the 6 clips to hold it in place. Add the reflectors if the weather conditions and what you're cooking requires it.  Start your meals in the oven by 9am (I did mine by 10am and it was all good) and then walk away . . . come back hours later and your food is cooked to perfection! Not even kidding about the perfection part . . . no, seriously.  It's PERFECTLY cooked!

Okay, so the first thing I cooked was a fresh ham roast.  It was a fairly good sized chunk of meat, so I cut it in half.  This not only allowed the Solavore Sport Solar Oven to cook it better (small pots cook better than densely filled large pots) but I then also got to cook it two different ways.  The first pot I just did salt and pepper, because sometimes I just want a plain pork roast.  The second pot I added mango-infused cranberries, onion, and some seasonings.

before cooking

fresh out of the solar oven - look at all those meat juices!

sliced and ready to eat

Plated with rutabaga hashbrowns and fresh fruit.  YUM!

The cleanup is incredibly easy, too.  Food DOES NOT burn in the solar oven - the oven temperature when cooking the pork roast topped out at 225F in the heat of the day.

Then cooking agony . . . I had soooo many food plans the first week of having the solar oven but the weather most certainly did not cooperate.  In fact, we got 7" of rain one night (can you say flash flood??  Our streets are STILL flooded 2 weeks later)! The weather remained mostly cloudy for a good week after that and the one sunny day we did have had 40mph winds, gusting up to a recorded 67mph. Not good for solar cooking!  It was SO. HARD. to wait for a good sunny or even mostly-sunny day so I could get back outside with the Solavore Sport Solar Oven!

When the sun finally showed its beautiful warm face again, next up were chicken quarters. I was going to try my medium-sized Granite Ware roaster in the solar oven but it was just a wee bit too tall - touching the oven's lid, so back to the two smaller 10" pots it was. I added apples, freshly foraged chanterelle mushrooms, thyme, rosemary, and some other seasonings.

before

perfectly done!

I'm well used to using a crock pot, and one of the things I really wanted to try in the solar oven was a venison roast.  Venison is a very lean meat and if not cooked correctly, will result in the driest roast you've ever attempted to eat. We eat a lot of venison - it's actually our main meat - so having a new method to try that promises perfectly cooked meat had me itching to try it.

Now, the directions say not to add any water or other oils to your roasts, but knowing that venison cooks better in the crock pot when slathered with unrefined coconut oil, I did the same for the solar oven.  I mixed seasonings in with the coconut oil and coated the entire roast with it, also adding bay leaves and orange slices.  The result? 

Fantastic doesn't even begin to cover it . . . the roast was so tender it just fell apart, which can be hard to achieve for venison.  Using the crock pot, venison is much more tender than using conventional oven roasting, but even the crock pot couldn't compare to the Solavore Sport Solar Oven.

unbelievably tender venison roast. *drool*

Tonight's supper is basically the filling for my own paleo recipe of chicken pot pie, minus the pie crust. Chicken, vegetables, herbs.  With the juices from the chicken quarters, (yes, quarters again! Hey, they were on sale for $3.99/10lb bag!) the added veggies will make for a fabulous thick stew to serve with the meat.

No "after" picture since what's pictured below is currently in the oven roasting away. But trust me, it will be soooooo delicious. :)

I have to say, the solar oven has become my new favorite way to roast meats. I am going to thoroughly enjoy experimenting with many different kinds of dishes!

More recipes can be found at Solavore:
Savory
Sweet
Blog

Some cool things about the Solavore Sport Solar Oven:

• use the reflectors to help heat the solar oven in less-than-ideal solar conditions - best to use them in the early morning and later afternoon, removing them during the heat of the day. 
• pasteurize water using the Solavore Sport Solar Oven! Simply fill your pots with water, place the WAPI (water pasteurization indicator) in the center of the pot and let the sun heat up the water to 149F for 10 minutes or longer. When the wax in the WAPI melts, the water is pasteurized.

The company history is quite interesting too - and a big THANK YOU shoutout to Anne Patterson for keeping this solar oven alive and going!

I am a HUGE fan of this thing - if you're looking for a holiday gift for the cook or eco-conscious person in your family, get them a Solavore Sport Solar Oven!  Or just get one for yourself - it's well worth it!