Cooking Outside with a “Hay Box”

Some visitors came and ate lunch at the bird-feeders today, this is a Black Collared Barbet.

 Crested Barbet

Jen, Caiden and Erin cooked dinner outside today, the exciting part was that Jen showed us how to use a “Hay Box” to cook the rice. She learnt about it at scouts on one of her camps. All you need is a box, a black box would be better as it attracts and traps heat from the sun but we worked with what we had and it worked just fine. A good time to start would be when the sun is high in the sky, midday.

Line the base of the box with a thick blanket, then add newspaper so that it will surround and cover the pot once it’s placed in the box and then another blanket is placed on top of the newspaper which is covering and surrounding the pot.

First boil the water in a pot on the stove, once the water is boiling, add rice and take your boiling pot outside and place it inside the newspaper in the hay box. Really surround the pot with plenty of newspaper and do it quickly so that not too much heat is lost. Then cover everything with a thick blanket so that it’s nice and snug.

Close the lid tight and leave the box in direct sunlight. On a hot day, it should  cook within a few hours. Check on the rice once or twice, not too often, as the heat will escape.

Jen and Kye repositioning the box into direct sunlight later this afternoon.

When she opened the box after approx 3 hours, there was plenty of condensation, heat and the rice was cooked.

Caiden preparing the veggies for the stew that he is going to cook.

Potjie pot and stand.

Box firewood for cooking.

(PS Erin and Jen decorated their white sneakers with fabric Sharpie pens, I’ll post about that soon).

A lovely stew with rice has been made for dinner, I can’t wait to try it tonight! What a wonderful afternoon spent outside!