Solar Cooking in Winter - Indian Style Kale

Because Canadians live with winter and cold temperatures, we perceive that Canada has little sunlight to use. The reality is however that on clear days, of which we have many in December and January, we can concentrate enough sunlight to cook our food.

I grow Dinosaur Kale in my back garden. This kale is an heirloom variety dating back 200 years, and it tastes wonderful.


Using my El Solito small parabolic solar grill, I fried the kale Indian style.

First I heated organic, fair trade olive oil from the Zatoun Co-Operative in Palestine. From now on, I will be using Zatoun's olive oil exclusively in my solar cooking.

I fried some black mustard seeds until they popped., then added onions, organic sea salt and turmeric. If you've ever wondered how curry powder gets its lovely colour, all the credit goes to turmeric, which doesn't really have much of a taste. We use it for the colour.


Then I added the raw kale, and covered the pan with a black enameled pot lid. The moisture in the kale helped to steam it.


After about 10 minutes, I had an Indian style cooked kale dish that was simply delicious, in addition to being local, organic, fair trade and vegan. Though I'm entering this blog in late December, this dish was prepared in mid-November in Toronto on a clear day.