Reva Jhingan Malik’s morning begins with reducing greens, soaking lentils, and cleansing the rice for the meal of the day. However, as an alternative of heading in opposition to her kitchen, she heads to the terrace of her off-grid house in Bengaluru the place she has a small setup that chefs her meals with out requiring cooking gasoline, kerosene, electrical energy, coal or picket.
Apparently, the meals is cooked the use of direct daylight!
Each and every morning at 9, she units up her sun cooker and puts all of the greens, lentils, and rice in respective trays for a two-course meal. The meals is cooked slowly within the daylight and is able inside two hours.
Such is the have an effect on of the sun cooker that Reva has no longer purchased an LPG cylinder previously 4 years.
These days, she makes use of the sun cooker to cook dinner plenty of foods from poha (spiced flattened rice), baati (crammed entire wheat dough balls), common greens and lentils to baking muffins and breads, roasting peanuts, boiling milk and making tea.
We sat down together with her to understand how she is harnessing the solar power for cooking and doing her bit in opposition to sustainable residing.
For depleting herbal fossil fuels
Reva, who runs Primalise, a consulting company within the town, was once motivated to scale back her carbon footprint amid the talks round protective the planet.
“We’ve been acutely aware of the depleting fossil fuels. Whilst it stays within the headlines for a couple of days, I imagine no longer sufficient is in point of fact being executed at person family ranges,” she stocks with The Higher India .
Prior to now 5 years, India’s imports of LPG surged 60 % as call for higher all of a sudden whilst home provides stagnated. Imports higher from 11.4 MMT in 2017-18 to 18.3 million metric tonnes (MMT) in 2022-23.
Home LPG manufacturing grew slightly 4 % within the 5 years to 2022-23 whilst intake expanded 22 %.
Reva says, “If we’re speaking about sustainability and educating it to our kids, are we ourselves adopting it? In the case of environmental coverage, we stay anticipating the governments to behave, however what have we executed at our personal person ranges in opposition to the reason? That concept got here as a turning level for me.”
She explored other ways to scale back her dependency on fossil fuels and cross with out it, a minimum of on the day-to-day residing stage.
“We had been the use of fossil fuels in our automobiles and at house for cooking. So, we first eradicated this utilization through getting an electrical car which was once a very easy selection. 2nd step was once to move with out LPG, and sun cooking was once the opposite,” she provides.
Reva determined to discard LPG cylinders totally in 2020. Previous to that, she was once the use of LPG cylinders that required to be refilled as soon as each and every 2-3 months. At the side of LPG, she was once the use of her folks’ sun cooker intermittently.
“I realised we will be able to in fact cross with out LPG. In our nation, the solar is so abundantly to be had to us, why no longer harness this power up to we will be able to?” she provides.
Since then, sun cooking has grow to be a number one supply of cooking for Reva.
Cooking on LPG vs sun range
Speaking concerning the execs of sun cooking, Reva says, “As soon as, I upload greens and different substances within the sun cooker then I don’t must stay stirring the pan and track it. You simply have to drag out the tray and the whole thing is finished. The program is extra handy for us than an LPG range,” she says.
Reva’s sun cooker is set 2-feet in duration and has 3 oblong formed boxes to put quite a lot of dishes like daal, greens, and rice one by one.
“To scale back the cooking time, I exploit chana and rajma soaked in a single day. Probably the most cons of the program is that we can not make chapatis and upload tadka to the daal. As an alternative, we’ve began consuming wheat within the type of daliya and baati. Additionally, we roast and upload cumin and coriander to make the lentil style higher,” she provides.
“It’s simply simplified meals alternatives for us now. The style has now grow to be secondary for us. Then again, we in my opinion to find the style to be fairly higher because the meals is cooked slowly and the style of the vegetable is retained,” she says.
Speaking concerning the limitation of the arrange, Reva says, “Whilst we do many of the cooking within the sun cookers, we’ve additionally stored firewood chulha (range) as a backup for cloudy and wet days. We gather firewood from bushes round our area and in addition use coconut shells and cow dung muffins as gas. We use firewood chulha handiest a few times a month.”
Every other backup for cooking that they use throughout cloudy days and at night time is their saved solar power. Their area has a small 850 VA sun inverter that delivers sufficient price for low-wattage electric home equipment.
She fondly talks about how she repurposed and transformed an outdated box-type sun cooker right into a meals dehydrator. They use it to dehydrate and keep extra end result when they have got a bounty. The contraption may be used for roasting grains, nuts or even drying homegrown turmeric.
For Reva, sun cooking may be cost-effective. “To start with, we’d be compelled to replenish the LPG cylinder each and every 2-3 months. It will charge Rs 1,200 according to replenish. We invested Rs 18,000 for the sun cooker. This was once a one-time funding as there is not any different routine expense and upkeep charge,” she says.
In India, nearly all of families use LPG for cooking functions and upload to the emission burden. Reva urges other people to harness solar power this is abundantly to be had within the nation.
“The general public assume sun cooking isn’t handy. With our revel in of totally switching to sun cooking, we discover it extra handy and more straightforward than an LPG range. Secondly, it’s guilt-free cooking. There may be an immense pride figuring out our meals is cooked in daylight without difficulty. We aren’t exploiting our planet’s sources anymore,” says Reva.
“We’ve controlled to near this power loop for ourselves. If this turns into aspirational and families use daylight as power then jointly we can mitigate the local weather disaster. All people can call to mind adopting sun cooking as our first step in opposition to power self-sufficiency,” she provides.
Supply: LPG imports surge 60% in 5 years: By means of Sanjeev Choudhary for Financial Occasions, revealed on 16 February 2024.
Edited through Padmashree Pande. All footage: Reva Jhingan Malik.