Home & Heart Kathleen Jarschke-Schultze The big news at our house is that we now own a Sun Frost refrigerator-freezer. I am estatic. It has brought a whole new dimension to food preparation. I now have to thaw some foods before I can cook them. I can cruise the frozen food aisles at the supermarket and bring home ice cream and frozen peas. Harold Our old Servel, Harold, served us well in his time. Unfortunately, he never did freeze anything in a consistent manner. At the upper portion of the refrigerator, attached to the ceiling was a small aluminum box with a separate door. It was called the ice box. In my ignorance I believed that meant that food would freeze if I put it in there. After many attempts where things froze half way and ice cubes, if they froze, tasted very weird I came to a great realization. It is called an ice box because the ice builds up around the outside of the box, then you have to defrost it. Sun Frost Our new Sun Frost, a RF-16, is a wonderful appliance. The R stands for refrigerator and the F stands for freezer. The refrigerator and freezer each have a separate door and compressor. There are door shelves. There is a light inside. Of the 119 color choices I chose 'Hedgerow Green', kind of an ivy green. When I transferred the food from a full Harold to the Sunfrost it only took up two shelves of space. I'm in love. Because of the Sun Frost I have used the defrost mode on my microwave for the first time. I made pesto and froze it in the ice cube trays so now I have the cubes in a bag ready to add to sauces, pasta, or pizza. I use a Seal-A-Meal¨ to freeze leftovers till I need them for a quick meal. The booklet that came with the Sun Frost claimed that veggies would stay fresh longer because of the higher humidity. They really do! If we don't finish all of a green salad one night, it is still crispy the next. There is one drawback to the Sun Frost that I will just have to learn to live with. It is covered in Formica¨ so refrigerator magnets will not stick to it. This has not been a problem for me. Also I would advise reading the owner's manual, provided inside the Sun Frost, before you position and wire your model permanently. Power Use We were very curious to see just how much power was going to be needed to run the Sun Frost. Bob-O ran the wiring in conduit down to the battery bank direct so it is running on 12 volts. After the initial start up the compressors seemed to run all the time. It took about a week for the Sun Frost to cool down to it's norm with the compressors running less and less all that time. RICHARD, MAYBE YOU COULD MAKE A GRAPH TO GO HERE. Food Club Update Chris Roth, an HP reader and solar chef, writes to to inform us about another food distributor. Northeast Cooperatives, an Eastern equivalent to Mountain People's Warehouse, distributes throughout New England and the Northeast. Their address is Northeast Cooperatives, POB 8188, Quinn Rd., Brattleboro, VT 05304 ¥ 1-800- 334-9939 ¥ locally, 257-5856. Seeds of Life Adrienne Rice of Lopez, WA has written to tell me of a group dedicated to self-sufficient gardening. They are Abundant Life Seed Foundation, POB 772, Port Townsend, WA 98368. They sell open- pollinated vegetable and grain seeds suitable for Pacific Northwest climates. They also stock seeds of hundreds of species of PNW native and naturalized flowers, shrubs and trees; seeds of native and non- native herbs; seed-saving supplies; and many books on nature, gardening, seeds, etc. Annual memberships are $10 (First Class, US). Other folks she would like all readers to know about are Ronniger's Seed Potatoes, Star Route, Moyie Springs, ID 83845. Their catalog is $1 and contains the largest selection in the USA of organically grown seed potatoes. Solar Cooker #s Inadvertently the area code numbers for Solar Box Cookers International were transposed in the Access of my article on the Solar Gourmet¨ in HP #24. The correct access information is: SBCI, 1724 Eleventh St., Sacramento, CA 95814 ¥ 916-444-6616. Access Kathleen Jarschke-Schultze, c/o Home Power, POB 130, Hornbrook, CA 96044 ¥ 916-475-3401 Sun Frost, 824 L St., Arcata, CA 95521 ¥ 707-822-9095