This was a conscious decision we made when we built the house. There were a number of reasons we decided against it (no ductwork with the radiant floor heat, so central air would have added much more materials and cost to the build; it's expensive to run and I don't like forking out cash to the electric company; I get cold in a/c, really, even if it's set at 72 degrees!; DS2's allergies and the added allergen-encouraging environment that ductwork brings. . . )
Which is a long-winded way to say it's been hot here this week!
Now, we're well-versed in strategies to cope with the heat. Both DH and I (as well as our kids) grew up in houses without a/c. For a number of years in my middle childhood, I spent a few weeks each late July and early August way down in the southeastern corner of Ohio on my paternal grandparents "farm", the home of which consisted of a single-wide trailer also with no air conditioning. And, during my usually two week stay with them, the main activity was canning green beans. All day. Two or three days a week. In a tin-can of a home, with no a/c, on top of a hill with only one tree, which was an ancient apple tree that while it was wide, was not tall enough to cast any shade on the trailer. A large portion of our non-canning time was spent sitting in lawn chairs under that apple tree.
Anyway, back to this little place here and our current heat wave. It happened to begin approximately two days after I decided to take a whole turkey (17.5 pounds!) out of the freezer to thaw. This was a decision I made partly because I wanted a break from the summer salad-grilled meat-taco/burrito/fajita menu we'd been partaking in for over a month, and partly because meat in the freezer is getting low on grillable stuff and I felt a need to make use of some of the larger meats on hand rather than go to (horrors!) the grocery store and purchase more meat for the grill.
If you've ever put on a Thanksgiving meal from scratch, which of course would include a whole turkey that you cooked yourself, you probably know that it takes about three days for a frozen turkey of any size above 10 pounds to thaw in the refrigerator. So, with our 90+ degree days starting on day two of my turkey's fridge-stay, that meant I was faced with a turkey that would be thawed and in need of cooking during the worst possible time to run an oven (especially for 4 hours straight!) in a house with no air conditioning. And, being that the turkey had already partially thawed, I could not simply put it back into the freezer to await a more kindly weather forecast.
I put off roasting the turkey on the first day it was entirely thawed. Even without the use of the oven, my house was a less-than-comfortable 85 degrees inside by dinner time.
On the morning of the second day (which, by the way, happened to be the first day of the Ag Expo at the nearby state university--of course I attended that afternoon even though the thermometer read 92 degrees at mid-day and the outdoor temperature display on the Suburban read an impressive 100 degrees when I got back into it after spending three and a half hours outdoors at the Ag Expo), I had a revelation.
My revelation was such: back in the days before air conditioning was the norm, and when people still lived on small farms and homesteads and raised (and therefore canned) a lot of their own food, a thing known as a "summer kitchen" was utilized. This was back in the day of if you were going to eat, you had to cook it at home; there wasn't a Mickey Dee's to run to or a pizza joint that drove the food to your house when it was hot outside (and inside!).
Now, a summer kitchen was simply an outdoor area in which food was cooked (and/or canned) during the hot weather months so that this important task could get done without heating up the house to unbearable temperatures. (85 is not unbearable, despite what the central air companies would like you to believe, or what the media might tell you: "go to a cooling station if your home does not have a/c"; it is simply uncomfortable but not deadly.)
What I needed was a summer kitchen to roast my turkey in! I just so happen to have a patio that is shaded by the deck above it (which extends across the entire back of my house). This patio is accessible through the walkout basement. A perfect location--outside, and also shady in the afternoon and evening hours. Not only that, but it possesses an outdoor electrical outlet.
I also just so happen to own an 18 quart roaster, the manufacturers of which claim you can fit an entire turkey into for roasting. And, I also just so happen to own a portable folding table which is large enough and sturdy enough to support said roaster holding a 17.5 pound turkey.
In other words, I took what was available, called on an old concept (the summer kitchen), and I roasted that sucker for dinner on a 92 degree day!
my impromptu summer kitchen
roasted turkey
(which I forgot to truss, thus the rather risque positioning of it's legs!)
Now, you might be thinking 92 degrees and roast turkey doesn't even sound appetizing. But we're not talking Thanksgiving-style, cold-weather, heavy-in-your-gut-menu. We had thinly sliced pieces served with a rice pilaf. Light, summery, yet filling. Plus, there is a lot of meat leftover for sandwiches, wraps, turkey tacoes, brothy soups, etc.
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