A meal cooked by the sun

"Would you like some rice?" my mother had asked me tonight. I had been about to say no when I had remembered how I had opened the glass lid of the solar cooker today afternoon at half past three. A very strong effluvia of boiled tomatoes had struck my nose. "One vessel contains tomatoes for a soup and the other rice" my mother had told me. I had opened each vessel in turn. The boiled tomatoes had smelt yum. And the rice was white and fluffy. She had kept these two blackened vessels in the solar cooker at about 12 noon and left them there without thinking about them. The sunrays had done the rest as they made the cooking compartment of the cooker very hot and boiled the vegetables and rice. Nothing gets burnt in this solar cooker my parents had bought in 1986. In the almost two decades that she has been using this cooker my mother must have saved quiet a lot of money as well as prevented burning fossil fuels like cooking gas. Peanuts get roasted very nicely. And as they are untouched by any flame they remain as white as they were when raw. I had once made tea by boiling water in this cooker. Just for fun. It had turned out very nice or maybe I made myself imagine it. She had once even baked my birthday cake in this. This was done after there had been a power failure which had meant that she couldnt use the electric oven. The old oven which she kept on the gas stove also collapsed so the cake went into its third cooker i.e., the solar cooker. It had come out so tasty that my mother felt sad that she hadn't noted the times it had remained in the two ovens. I have never eaten such a tasty cake ever since. But maybe I look at the past with what is called a 'soft focus'. But when all is said and done this is a real neat thing that we have in our house. I am thinking of presenting one such cooker to a family which can't afford to buy it but spends an awful lot of money on wood, kerosene and cooking gas. Even if they can cook a hundred meals a year on it there would be a very positive impact on the environment and their fuel bill. If I had been a schoolkid I would have ended this short note with a "I love my solar cooker, it is soooo nice." It really is. And I must tell you that I did have some rice tonight. It was really very tasty!