Just hate it. I turn into a beast, my head aches, I get swamped in self-pity and I'm really beyond ridiculous. My level of poutiness borders on obscene. I am a total wuss.
But I love me some nice weather! What a conundrum.
How do you cook and deal with the heat without central air if you're a big whiny-pants like me?
I use my porch. If you don't have a porch, use the deck. Or the stoop. Or the outside cellarway. The grill... Whatever it takes to keep the house more comfortable!
I keep an old table on the porch (and another one in the garage). That's where my deep fryers live...
I use my big roaster oven on the porch to roast things over the summer. We did a turkey on Monday... and had fresh turkey sandwiches on Tuesday and turkey and gravy over Basmati Rice tonight with grilled summer squash and zucchini on the side. Remember the idea of a "Summer Kitchen"? People who heated with wood stoves understood that the human body is not meant to be roasted for 10 weeks/year. Therefore they COOKED OUTSIDE... I love how smart that was! And when I've toured vintage home museums and plantations, even some of the simpler homes had the kitchens off-set from the main house, because there's no cooling a house down if a wood-burning kitchen stove is fired up, right?
All this is done outside to limit my whining! Now you know the real truth!
I do rotisserie chickens and pork roasts on the porch. I just skewer them inside, season them and set up the rotisserie, tuck 'em inside and turn it on. Amazing taste and no heat in the kitchen.
When the kids bought Dave a new grill for Father's Day a few years ago, we got one with the side burner. I use it for boiling potatoes and pasta for salads.
No heat in the kitchen!!! YAY!
I know lots of folks are temperature sensitive. Some hate the cold. Some hate the heat. The important thing is to figure out ways to deal with things and still be considered two shades shy of normal.
So what steps do you take to keep things cool? Take the heat off? If this year is truly going down as the hottest summer on record, let's share whatever advice we can find to get each other through it!
