I come home flushed with victory (and the 35 C / 95 F degree heat), walk in the door, smack my forehead with an open palm and cry "Doh!"
We have a six cubic foot refrigerator! This is a HUGE step up from the 3.2 cubic feet of the fridge in the Tinpalace, but it's still not much when you've just bought 25 or 30 pounds of fresh produce that needs a cool place to rest until you can get it in your tummy or preserved.
So we were debating. Do we buy another fridge and put it out on the deck? Most people here have an extra fridge and many have both an extra fridge and a freezer. But we're trying to cut down on power consumption, not increase it, and we do fine in the winter, when I manage to stuff everything I buy into the fridge.
Then, while looking at a site for solar ovens (of all places) I ran onto mention of something called the Zeer or pot-in-pot which was developed by teacher Mohammed Bah Abba. Bah Abba realized that he could put the second law of thermodynamics and transpiration to work to keep food cool.
The Zeer pot is made with two unglazed clay pots, one pot smaller than the other. The smaller pot is put inside the bigger pot, and the space in between them is filled with sand. The sand is watered twice a day and a wet towel is put on top of the two pots to keep warm air from entering the interior. As the water in the sand evaporates through the surface of the outer pot, it draws heat away from the inner pot and carries it away.
The inner pot can be filled with water, fresh fruit, vegetables or even meat. In this way, fresh produce can be kept for long periods of time without the need for electricity, or the high embodied energy of a camping cooler. Tomatoes and peppers which usually spoil in two days in Africa's heat will last for up to three weeks, and African spinach, which normally spoils after just a day, remains edible for up to five days. Eggplants will keep for up to 27 days instead of three.
The Zeer will keep water (and other beverages) at about 15 degrees Celsius (59 F) and they say that meat can be kept fresh for long periods, though I wouldn't be putting meat in one. I am very squeamish about meat - I want it kept almost at the freezing point. I guess it's better than uncooled at all though, and might keep meat from spoiling for an extra day. So, once the deck is built I will buy a couple of large clay pots and set up a "Zeer" produce cooler on the deck for all that extra produce I go nuts for in the middle of July.
2 comments:
my after college (the first time) roommate was T. Zeer.
This sounds like a neat idea but water is going to be a big issue here this summer. The Water Board introduced a new limit on water usage. We have never in all the time we have lived here in paradise been over or even remotely close to the limit. The old limit (for the sake of argument) was 100. We were at 80 maybe twice. Now the limit is 50. It is okay now but even with the limited amount of watering we do in the summer we are never going to be below 50 even in the winter. And the problem being...this means those that have been wasteful with water will continue to be wasteful because they don't even think twice about paying the overage fee all year long.
Hi NWTW, :)
I think "watering" in this case means pouring two or three cups of water into the sand that is between the two pots. This set-up was developed in/for the Sudan where water is as scarce as hen's teeth.
Maybe there ought to be a cut-off valve. Use your 5000 gallons and then you don't get any more until the new month. Since we use about 20 gallons a day I'm not too worried about that extra two cups. :) I can probably "harvest" it while waiting for the water to get hot for dishes - i.e. catch the cold water that comes out of the tap first.
Post a Comment