Years ago, businesswoman Anne Patterson ate some whole wheat bread baked by a friend in a solar oven on the deck of her sailboat.
Patterson, who didn't like cooking with propane in the boat's cramped, one-burner galley, tried her hand with carrot cake.
"It was stunningly good," Patterson recalled. "The carrots and coconut don't turn to mush as they do in a conventional oven."
In 2012, Patterson called St. Paul-based Solar Oven Society, the distributor of the ovens.
She was retiring at the time, and eventually bought the solar-oven business that had run out of gas after 15 years. In 2014, Patterson, who is now CEO, acquired and invested what now totals about $500,000 in the business.
Renamed Solavore, Latin for "devour the sun," the company targets environmentalists for easier-than-you-think solar cooking. It's also a social enterprise that plans to provide thousands of low-cost cookers to women in Third World countries, who cook over dangerous wood coals in their smoky huts.
"This is an 'encore career' in the sense that it is a complete departure from my professional pursuits," said Patterson, 63, an energetic woman who looks 20 years younger. "I care about the environment and I care about women. And I love to cook."
The former Solar Oven Society was a nonprofit started years ago by Mike and Martha Port. They worked through church groups, other nonprofits and volunteers to assemble and ship solar ovens around the globe.