June 23rd

June 21 “Extreme” heat continues—
Funny how we’ve had extreme here all my life and the local media never called it “extreme heat warning” and gave lots of advice on how to handle it. It’s a good idea, I think, especially for all the people who live here from where the heat isn’t so extreme every day but still it strikes me as funny that 111 is extreme heat when we always have our highest temps—from 110-115 in June for a week or two.
Of course, we are a lot warmer at night than we were 30 years ago and don’t cool off as readily anymore because of the amount of asphalt and cement we have here now.
-Chicken tenders are in the solar oven today to see how they will cook. Actually, they are strips of chicken breast that was on special at Safeway last week.
-Rubbed some Mrs. Dash on the chicken and put in a larger pan. I wanted to check on it about every 30 minutes to see how it was doing—I know it takes longer that way! But I want to see what it looks like. It’s different the way it evolves from cooking in the inside oven.
-Two small potatoes, some white onion sliced/chopped. Parsley flakes, some turns of peppercorn, some salt and basted with some butter a little into cooking after the butter melted enough.
-Put the potatoes in an hour after the chicken.
-Temp in the oven for this gets to 250 according to the thermometer in the oven.
-So far, if whatever cooking needs more than 250 degrees, double the time to cook it.
I’ll try to remember to get pictures of this when it’s done. And the cats get some chicken for dinner tonight!
_Took everything out at about 2:00 p.m.
--Little too long for chicken –started somewhere about 12 p.m. or little before. Chick was too dry
--Potatoes were okay, but not as tasty as I thought they might be—little squishy.
Note about potatoes: they were better cold the next day after they were cooked. More flavor completely.