If You Cant Stand the Heat, Get Out of the Kitchen!

Here in NE Ohio, we have had unseasonably high temperatures over the past two weeks, and it doesn’t look like it will be letting up anytime soon!

We don’t have air conditioning.  That’s not true.  We have air conditioning when we bought our new furnace 4 years ago, but it never worked.  I have put hubby off each and every year because I think air conditioning is a waste of money and resources unless it is 90+ degrees outside!  That being said, we use an air conditioning unit in our bedroom at night or on extremely hot days when we need a reprieve from the heat.

I came home one day last week to find Todd making zucchini fries in the oven, baking them for over an hour.  To say the least, I was a bit perturbed.  When it is 90 degrees in the house, nothing should be baking on the stove or oven (in my opinion)!

We (meaning me) have decided that with this heat, we would not cook on the stove in the house.  If we do, it would be in the morning to prepare a meal that can be nuked in the microwave in the evening.  Everything else is to be cooked either in a crockpot or on the grill.

That being said, these are a few meal ideas that we are going to be implementing this week:

Salad with grilled chicken

Roasted chicken (in a crockpot) with instant mashed potatoes and corn

Hamburgers (grilled) with zucchini grilled in a foil pocket

BBQ Ribs with leftover zucchini

Chicken quesadillas (we have a quesadilla maker that we love!)

BBQ Ribs with zuke & green beans from garden

Homemade Waffles
(we ran out of milk so had to use water, hence the holes!)

Dinner the night of the power outage: steak, leftover zuke and mashed potatoes

Here are some pictures of meals that helped us to conserve our energy/keep the heat down in our house over the past few days:

I would love to hear about what you make in warm weather.  Any recipes we should try out?