Ann Ferro: If you can’t take the heat… improvise

When it is as hot and humid as it has been of late, I find myself rearranging my life, or parts of it, to accommodate my inability to function when I am so hot that my eyes are sweating and when my hair, which is never something anyone would want, is so awful that despite the heat, I contemplate wearing a hat or at least an old fashioned kerchief.

We have no AC in our house. Our house was built in the 1920s and the room flow and windows aren’t really ready for air conditioning units. We had one about 40 years ago to cool our youngest’s bedroom, but that unit has disappeared into wherever old AC units go.

So, we depend on fans. Box fans, whole house fans, round circulating fans, an interesting Dyson unit that is also a heater, a pillar fan and several personal units that I have stashed near places where I sit to read. They work if you are right in front of them, which poses a problem if you are cooking with gas. I have a gas stove, which has become the target of those who would lead us to believe that our “cooker” is diminishing our cognition with its noxious effluent … which, come to think of it, can explain a lot about me. But that is a digression.

I have decided that it is really too hot to cook, or at least cook like I normally do. There are always the two options of eating out our ordering in, which nicely solve the problem of not cooking, but they require a level of planning so that you look presentable to enter a restaurant to eat or pick up. And, as I have noted, my hair … well there is really nothing that can be done about it. Wild would be aspirational.

So, I have my own collection of “not cooking” meals that get me and my spouse through these steamy days. Sandwiches come to mind. If I have remembered to purchase the makings that don’t require some addition of heat so that they can be consumed, I can slap together a sandwich with some pickles and potato chips and call it a meal. I can hear my nutrition-focused daughter’s eyes rolling. I should have written, made a big salad. And, yes, I could make a salad. Every once in a while I do make a salad.

Then there are meals that I can put together using my toaster oven, which adds little to the heat index in our kitchen.  It is also an air fryer, so I can make chicken wings (Costco sells some killer frozen wings)… from the freezer to the air fryer and on a plate in less than 20 minutes.  I can also prepare veggies in that toaster oven and so it is possible to have a meal of wings and broccolini with ice cream for dessert without heating either the kitchen or the cook.  That toaster oven competes with the slow cooker for the honor of being my go-to in this torpid weather.  Throw some chicken breasts, a can of cream of chicken soup, some extra parsley and peas in the cooker, set it on slow cook and, at the end of the day, with the help of the toaster oven where I can make biscuits or at least heat some up…I have a nice meal of chicken and biscuits.  I should add that the peas go into the slow cooker at the very end of the cycle.   This recipe, if you can call it that, is also a go-to on stormy, cold or any other day.

If I can plan ahead, I can hard boil some eggs and stash them in the fridge for use on sweltering days for egg salad sandwiches or a salad, yes, a salad with greens and peppers, some herbs from my garden and hazelnuts which I have in my freezer.

What would be best, though, would be to have someone else prepare, serve and clean up, which is right up there with wishing for world peace and a skinny body and hair that looks basically presentable. I do try to hold on to some sense of reality.