Anytime we have the wood stove fired up, we use it for cooking as well as heat. We have a variety of cast iron pots to work with and are usually able to slow cook stews and sauces, fry eggs and sausages, and warm up rice. But with the weather turning warmer we have not needed the heat so we are back to using our gas range in the kitchen. In order to keep our bills and our carbon footprint to a minimum we usually plan it's use fairly carefully. For instance, to cook rice I start it off in the pressure cooker in the solar oven. This brings it up almost to a boil. As a result we require about half the cooking time on the stovetop to finish it off. When we need to use the oven, we cook as many things as possible either simultaneously or in sequence to avoid having to heat the oven up more than once. In the picture you can see what we cooked in one afternoon; an organic chicken with organic potatoes and carrots for dinner, some banana chocolate chip muffins for dessert (there were 2 trays cooked), and granola for breakfast (again there were 2 trays cooked). We tend to cook in bulk as well, we made days worth of all these dishes and they occupied the oven at the same time.
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