2026, Food, Uncategorized, Weather

Hot Weather Food

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Well, if the NWS is correct, we will be having some scorching hot days this week. I am thankful for the inch of rain we received 4:00 am yesterday, so we can stay indoors and not worry about watering the garden beds. I am also thankful we have air conditioning.

Our fridge is stocked with quite a few salads, including homemade coleslaw, an Iranian tomato and cucumber salad, tzatziki chickpea salad, and potato salad. I have never been a huge fan of salads, but I like these. I also made bison borscht over the weekend that can be eaten hot or cold. I will eat mine hot. I can’t abide cold soup. I prefer my food steaming.

Boommate is extremely sensitive to food temperature, and refuses to eat anything warmer than lukewarm much of the time. She even drinks her coffee cool. She won’t touch hot food on hot days. We lived quite amicably, though, with the microwave and the refrigerator helping us dine together. We both love ice-cream, of course! We will dine together happily on salads and soup this week, and will continue to welcome any rain we may get.

What are your favorite hot weather foods? How do you stay cool during heatwaves? Ever eaten bison?

49 thoughts on “Hot Weather Food”

  1. No bison. I became a vegetarian when I was 16 and I had never encountered bison as a food item prior to then. However, considering how early on I stopped eating things because it was too easy to associate them with the live animal, I’m pretty sure bison would have been off the list even before I was 16.

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    1. I turned veggie at age 14, but I did get out to Medora prior to that and get to have bison burgers in that restaurant where Teddy Roosevelt’s one man show was held
      hakk, I shot geese and pheasants and ducks until I declared myself a vegetarian out of respect for life in a pre-draft proclamation that would turn out to be my conscientious objector platform if it came to that.
      it didn’t they called off the draft the year before my number would have been called. I went to file for a co even though he was wearing an army uniform and the guy at the recruitment office just told me to not bother with it because it wasn’t gonna come to pass. i believed him even though he was wearing an army uniform

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  2. I’ve never thought about having hot weather foods although I’ve certainly thought about cold weather foods (tomato soup and grilled cheese). Right now of course everything here is about strawberries. I’ve frozen strawberries. I’ve made strawberry jam. I made strawberry icebox cake and yesterday afternoon, when the power finally went back on, I made a strawberry bundt cake with lemon glaze. Then there’s the assorted strawberries on ice cream and the strawberries on waffles.

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    1. For the past 10 days here, everything has been about tart cherries, like your strawberries. The crop was lush and abundant. 2 gallons in the freezer now. 😋

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  3. When I was in college, my roommate was related through his mother and by marriage to Harold Schaefer (sp?), the North Dakota inventor of Glass Wax and owner of a buffalo herd. Once when his parents visited their ND relatives, they brought us several pounds of ground buffalo. So for the next week or so we had buffalo at several meals.

    During hot weather and during summer in general I use the grill a lot, several times a week. Meals tend to be simple—a grilled protein, rice or potatoes or bread, a green vegetable and a simple salad. To mix it up we sometimes have a more elaborate salad but usually that just means romaine with a variety of toppings as you might find at a salad bar and topped, perhaps, with a poached egg.

    For some reason our tarragon plants are especially robust this year and so I’ve made tarragon chicken pasta salad twice so far. I like a good pasta salad and often end up eating the leftovers for breakfast in the days following.

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  4. My last summer in college I worked in the Black Hills and I’m sure I had bison then.

    I love cold borscht and gazpacho but alas, too early for tomatoes.

    I expect I’ll be indulging in potato salad and ice cream, maybe some cold peanut noodles.

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      1. I used to enjoy cold peanut noodles from roadside stands while in Taiwan, but if I had them for lunch, the entire office smelled of garlic for the rest of the day, and I would get complaints when sleeping next to my beloved that night.

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  5. For any meat eater, bison is a good choice. Expensive but lean. I buy directly from the owners of a herd.
    It’s not feed lot management.

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    1. We got 6 lbs of bison stew meat from some friends who are members of the Three Affiliated Tribes on the Ft. Berthold Reservation. The tribe raised bison and elk, and gave away the meat to tribal elders, and had so much left that our friends couldn’t use all they got, so they gave us some.

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  6. Tangential. For many years, there has been a cheese shop (I believe it was originally owned by Eichtens) on Highway 8 between here and Fawn-Doe-Rosa. They had a huge mouse statue out front as well as a bison statue. YA and I always stopped on the way home. Then a couple of years ago, it appeared to be under new management and this year when we went to Fawn-Doe-Ross, the shop is definitely closed and the bison statue and the big mouse statue are gone. Sad.

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  7. No hot foods for me when it gets hot. I have a hard time with this kind of weather. It ends any kind of ambition I imagined I might have, and I melt.

    I crave ice cream most of the time, but that craving gets more powerful at this time of year. Fortunately, I’m broke right now, so no trips to the store for indulgences like ice cream!

    I make fruit and veggie smoothies year round, and that is my planned brunch today. I also love salads made with fresh spinach and leafy greens, cherry tomatoes, sliced cukes, grated carrots, a boiled egg, and sunflower seeds. I’ve been including fresh basil and nasturtium blossoms lately. Sometimes I add dried cranberries or raisins and almonds.

    I make herbal teas and refrigerate them. I have one made of hibiscus and honey right now, and I always have Moroccan Mint iced tea – no sweetener, just the mint. It’s so refreshing!

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    1. Like VS, one of my favorite days of the year is when I pickup a 6-qt flat of fresh strawberries from Lorence’s Berry Farm in Northfield. Yum! Made strawberry shortcake last night. Yum again. And just plain strawberries drizzled with balsamic vinegar glaze is heavenly too.

      Hot weather means lots of salads and grilling protein outside. Whatever generates the least amount of heat in the house. No crockpot meals or oven-baked whatever.

      I’ve had bison a few times. Pretty good and much healthier than beef. Related to that would be elk. Equally good, but both different from the beef we’re used to eating.

      Chris in O-town

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      1. Lorence’s is where I go for strawberries as well.. and raspberries in August. I picked strawberries on Saturday… got there at 6 am!!

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  8. I love main dish salads, like a Southwestern Couscous one we haven’t done for a while – may try it this week. I like pasta salads but hate to cook it in hot weather – heat up the kitchen only to turn on the A/C…

    Will do tuna salad sandwiches for lunch today, and maybe a packaged chicken/noodle thing from the freezer tonight. We have two days predicted here in the nineties – will stock up on some prepared salads from the co-op.

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  11. Agree with the cold soups- borscht, gazpacho and also a cucumber/garlic/yogurt or buttermilk & ? dill soup I had in the past. Obviously I’ll have to look up a recipe. I think I had it at Harbor View Cafe in Pepin–it was delicious! Since I am now mostly plant based, I like salads made with lentils, chickpeas or beans and lots of herbs.

    I have had bison in the past as well as elk-both tasty but like most meats, feel a bit “heavy” now. I still occasionally have fish, chicken or turkey tenderloin (latter is great roasted at low temps- stays juicy so I might try making a turkey salad). I do this when I want variation or don’t have a choice of an adequate protein source. I put them or tofu in lettuce wraps.

    Due to my sugar addiction, I am trying to give up sugar (yes that means substitutes too) so trying to get thru summer with no ice cream, gelato, sorbet etc. Fortunately as several have noted, fresh fruit is starting to get plentiful- peaches, cherries and strawberries now, then raspberries, melons on the way and finally fall apples (and mandarin oranges).

    Thanks for Mother Nature helping to water my garden so there is wonderful lettuce, chard and herbs with tomatoes and cucumbers on the way.

    MMM I’m hungry. Starting breakfast with a huge ripe peach mixed with steel cut oatmeal!

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  12. Joann’s Quinoa Tabouli – the one with the pomegranate arils in it. I can’t find the recipes anymore. Wasn’t that called “Kitchen Congress”? Where can I find it? There were some good recipes in there!

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        1. Kitchen Congress is alive and well. When you open up WordPress, one of the first screens you should see says trailbaboon at the top with a little down pointing triangle. If you click on the triangle, it’ll give you Blevins and Kitchen Congress.

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        2. This is to VS: I think WP works much differently on an iPad. I almost never go to WP. I just go to trailbaboon.com, and the option you described is not there. So I tried going to WordPress as you described, and the option isn’t there either. I only have the option to “visit site”. I can’t see Blevins anymore either, so I’m glad you send us emails. I’m not sure what we’d do without you!

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  15. Had several meals of bison. It is good. I would not pull off the interstate to have it.
    Why is hot weather food different than any other weather food in an air conditioned world?
    With all my other typing issues, I have a skin infection on the back of my left hand, my dominant hand. Doctor wants me to keep it covered. To keep it covered, makes it useless. If I one hand type with my right hand, it will look like this
    Edylc

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  17. It happens that I’d copied a few recipes from the Kitchen Congress into my Word recipe documents- one happens to be Joanne’s:
    QUINOA TABOULI W/POMEGRANATE

    2 cups cooked quinoa
    1 cup arils (seeds) from 1-2 pomegranates
    1 cup cucumber, diced
    ½ cup chopped green onion
    ½ cup green pepper, diced small
    ¾ cup minced parsley
    ½ cup minced cilantro
    ¼ cup minced mint leaves
    ¾ cup sliced raw almonds

    DRESSING
    ¼ cup lemon juice
    ¼ cup olive oil
    Salt and pepper to taste
    Mix all ingredients together except dressing ingredients to make tabouli. In a small bowl, whisk together lemon juice, oil, salt and pepper. Pour over tabouli, mix and serve.

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  18. Wow – I also have:
    – Clyde’s Double Breakfast Biscuits
    – Renee’s Portuguese Fish Stew, and her Gnocci
    – Jacque’s Greek Orzo Salad
    – Steve’s Black Bean Soup
    – Steve’s Simple Canja
    – tim’s vegetarian burrito

    AND for some reason I saved a listing called Kitchen Congress Contents! Maybe we’ll have to re-create this thing??

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  20. I freeze my ass off when it gets hot outside. My wife turns on the air conditioner. My feet were cold the other day and I commented on it she said that it was the first time she had turned the air conditioner on this year, and I had to sit on the couch with a blanket over my feet. I do like pasta, salads, and whip up a bunch of tortellini and things with tomatoes and cheese and noodles and olives and the lake I also make regular salads and a large quantities and throw them in a gallon bag in the refrigerator eat them for a day or two egg salad is always good and watermelon is a fantastic addition to the summertime diet. My grandkids eat the same whether it’s 20 below or 100 above but we’re working on it. Their mom wants the same way. I did her wrong when she was little and I was going to divorce and we did a very large percentage of Burger King and McDonald’s happy meals. She still is LTD. to pizza grilled cheese bratwurst and very few other items. Her youngest kid was good eating for a while, but now has followed his older brothers leads and he is a large fan of chicken nuggets and french fries for some reason. They’re all huge fruit enthusiasts and I get to eat all the grapes. Strawberries blackberries, raspberries, and the like when I’m there they don’t have any green salads however, I guess it is the kosovo influence?
    tim

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  21. Well, after saying, I don’t think about foods to eat when it’s hot, I ended up having wheat chex cereal with cold milk for lunch.

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  22. When I was a kid there was a restaurant near my town that was kind of a curiosity. The owner had a herd of buffalo. I don’t know for a fact that they were buffalo; they could have been bison. At the time I think many people called bison buffalo.

    The restaurant had a large taxidermied specimen inside, and a handful of live animals penned behind the building. The building was a large converted barn, with horse stalls converted into dining booths.

    There was something on the menu called Buffalo Balls, but I have only a vague memory of what the dish was made of or whether I actually ate any. I think I was only there once, and I was only five or six.

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