2023, Family, Food, Nature, Seasons

Summer Kitchen

31 Comments

Today’s post comes to us from Barbara.

Some of you have expressed curiosity about my summer kitchen. When the weather gets too warm, I do everything I can here to stave off using the A/C.  This summer, though, it’s been used more than usual.

There is a small stand on the patio, just outside the back door, and next to it a former potting table/cart (on wheels) that a neighbor left out on the boulevard when they moved.

You can see from the photos some of the appliances and their homes. The toaster oven, when I bring it out for baking, stays on the stand to the left. There’s a large ceramic tile on top of the potting cart surface.

I do most of my prep work in the kitchen, and then bring the food out to cook outside. The flaw in this system is that in “high summer”, the back patio is not in shade except in early morning, and late afternoon. In the sun on a hot day it’s just too hot to be out there at all – I need to rig up an awning of some kind. So this works best in early and late summer, like later this week when temps will be low 80s.

We tried several chilled soups this summer, one of them being this one:

Chilled Cantaloupe Mint Soup
1/2 Medium cantaloupe, cut into chunks and pureed in blender with several mint leaves

Add and mix well:

1-1/2 Tbsp honey    (less if you used sweetened yogurt)
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1 – 8 oz container plain yogurt  (or sweetened yogurt and reduce the honey)
1/4 cup buttermilk , or 1/4 cup fruity white wine

Cover and chill 1 -2 hours before serving.
Garnish with fresh mint leaves, and float some blueberries if you have them.
Serves 2

What experiences have you had with outdoor cooking?
Have any good non-heated recipes to share?

31 thoughts on “Summer Kitchen”

  1. Husband grills. I like to sit and watch him, but it seems like so much work. He is very finicky, and makes much more work for himself than I think he needs to.

    Last weekend we had to use up savoy cabbage we harvested. Husband decided to make a huge batch of borscht. It had to be Ukrainian borscht, not German-Russian or Russian borscht, and he fussed and fussed and followed two recipes, one for the ingredients and one for the procedures. He had been preoccupied with the soup all week before he started making it on Saturday. I could hardly stand to watch. He promised he won’t make any more borscht until next year.

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  2. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    My Grandparents would set up a “summer kitchen” for canning, food prep and animal slaughter (chickens by the time I was there. They also did hogs before I was there to see it). Grandma used the “wash house,” the out building where she did laundry and where the summer outdoor shower was located. The larger projects, such as chicken slaughter, were in the side yard and set up in a line in which everyone had a job. My job was to sit on Dad’s lap and watch. This was fascinating.

    In my camping years I did all kinds of outdoor cooking with a camp stove, a reflecting oven, and over coals. I loved all of it. Everything cooked outdoors tasted great, even the burned stuff.

    Barb, I admire your devotion to not using AC. In the summer I must use it to manage my allergies. I have not used it here since the weather cooled, and I am congested and my ears have fluid in them so soon I will need to close up the house and re-filter the air with the AC and my air filters.

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  3. I wish I had your resolve about not using AC, Barb. I can’t tolerate the heat at all, and this year the air quality has been so bad at times that I’ve really needed to stay in due to my asthma. I actually use the AC more than the furnace in this condo. My unit faces south and the deck is really hot in the summer. It’s shady in the morning but by 11 a.m. it’s just too hot to walk on the deck without a rug or flip flops. I have to close the curtains to keep the sun from heating up the house. My insulation project from last fall really helped to reduce my AC bills this year. I also invested in new insulating curtains and it really keeps things cooler.

    I like to grill outside and I could actually make a summer kitchen if I put my mind to it. I’d only use it in spring and fall though. It’s just too hot in the summer. I like the re-purposing of the neighbor’s discarded garden bench! Great ideas!

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  5. The “cooking” location outside regular kitchen that I recall is my uncle’s shack where he fileted river catfish and smoked them. Few people have wild catfish on their list of eatable fish. Unless prepared correctly, it’s slimy and muddy tasting. Uncle’s smoked stuff was excellent. Not as a main course of course but a snack with crackers. His snack was always infested with hornets.

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    2. Very much like Minnesota bullheads. They’re best caught and deep fried in the spring or they are mushy and awful. Waterville Sportsmens’ Club makes really good deep fried bullheads in their tent at Bullhead Days. I had never tried them before I lived there but once I lived there, and worked for Fisheries, I knew I would have to try them. I was pleasantly surprised. I wouldn’t go searching for them, but if offered I would eat them willingly.

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    3. Last week I was a SNACK for a black digger wasp.
      That sting hurt! I get stung in the garden often, but this sting was a new experience of pain. It swelled up for 2 days.

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  6. I have never cared for cold soup. It just seems wrong somehow. I don’t like beverages like V-8 juice either. It is some kind of sensory thing, I think. I remember something from the 1970’s when people died of botulism after eating poorly processed and canned vichyssoise.

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  7. vichyssoise and gazpacho also a squash soup with sour cream
    tomato onion vinagarette
    hummus and egg salad require boiling water but that’s tolerable
    i have awning parts and loads of 12×10 heavy canvas for awning ideas if you can use any of it let me know

    we’ve got a year

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  8. We have a gas grill here. Since most of what we do is heat up veggie burgers and veggie hot dogs, it was too much work to baby coals for 45 minutes for four minutes of heating stuff up. I have done pizza on the grill and of course kebabs on the grill, but I think our number one choice is corn on the cob.

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    1. Husband has a wood/charcoal grill/smoker that looks like an iron lung. We have all sorts of different varieties of wood, smoking chips, charcoal, etc piled in the garage. He has an electric Swedish fire starter.

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  9. Years and years ago, we were invited to a friends cabin for a weekend. Taking turns making meals, I didn’t know how to use a grill and had to get help. We just never “grilled” at home, neither charcoal or gas. We had alot of bonfires and usually used metal hangers for sticks. Sometimes I’d go get a willow branch. So we didn’t use BBQ.
    I did learn how after Kelly and I were married and now I grill every Sunday evening, if not more.

    I hate using the oven when it’s so hot (no AC in our house) so either microwave or cold food. Usually it’s too hot we don’t feel like eating. but daughter doesn’t care; she’s baking whatever.

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  11. I only do very simple cooking outdoors. Something like kebabs on a grill if the kebabs have been preassembled indoors. Bringing pots and pans and utensils and food outside and then taking everything in again is too much work. I’m lazy.

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