This late hour of the evening (22:05) is not a usual time when I start thinking about writing a post, although these days with the heatwave, maybe it becomes my regular posting time... And a time for doing something else - having a free sauna session in the kitchen. 😂
Actually, I decided yesterday that I will not cook anymore while it is this hot. If we die from hunger, I don't care! It is just not human to cook under these conditions when the thermometer shows more than 30 degrees Celsius in the kitchen, be near hot pans or, God forbid, ovens.
Sorry, I was wrong, the thermometer on my kitchen clock shows 31.1 degrees Celsius. 😁 It is definitely better to choose any other room or the balcony, where the temperatures are more bearable and make some abstract art. Something like this:
Silly me, it is not art!
It is the glass lid of my pot in which finely chopped onions, carrots, green peas, potatoes, and diced turkey meat marinated with garlic and parsley are being cooked right now.
So, I already broke my proposal... 🤦♀ I already started to cook when my first thought about this post arrived. Or did it happen the other way? The idea came when I started to cook... I think this is the correct order of things. Please bear with me, I am under the sauna treatment, and I could write nonsense here. 😅
What is neither funny nor nonsense is the consideration of spending as little time as possible behind the stove during the summer. The problem is that we like to have cooked meals for lunch, because that is how we learned it from childhood. As an unwritten rule in our minds is the deeply embedded thought that something cold, like a sandwich, cannot and should not be lunch. If I just think what my grandmother would say if she saw me with such a "lunch"... the idea would be rejected in a second. So, the day that we would skip the cooked main meal still hadn't arrived.
I will try to choose dishes that don't need hours of cooking, and that don't need several pots and pans that mercilessly heat the kitchen. (like cooking soup, frying meat, cooking vegetables, etc, all for one lunch of several courses). I like one-pot dishes - these will often be on the menu. I would try with cold salads as well, preparing the ingredients in advance and cooling them down in the fridge before the time to have lunch arrives. More options are omelettes of eggs and vegetables, fresh vegetables with canned tuna and boiled eggs, roasted meat or fish that don't require a long cooking time, ice cream (no, that is not a valid option for lunch haha), buy ready-made food and eat it at home, etc...
What I am What I was (as the cooking time finished while I was writing my options) cooking this evening is our one-pot lunch for tomorrow. I will cool it down and have it ready when we come home tomorrow from my gig and the beach that is planned in the schedule. As I already mentioned, it contains onion, carrots, turkey meat, garlic, parsley, green peas and potatoes - ingredients I consider healthy and nutritious. The best part is that I will not have to cook it tomorrow. 😁
So, how do you handle the topic of cooking during summer? Do you have some creative ideas on how to avoid it but still have cooked and healthy dishes at your table? If you like, please share with us some of your options. 😇
