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In my home this week, my goal is to keep my cool and to keep the house cool, as well. It's HOT. Full on summer has arrived with high temperatures and high humidity. All week long the 'feels like' temps are well over 100F.
If super cold weather makes me want to make hearty meals and snuggle under blankets with a good book, these sorts of temperatures make me want to sit before a van, sip iced water and not even allow my brain to form a thought. I swear thinking makes me sweat this time of year!
However, I won't get off lightly this week. There are a few things I need to do...
Work:
I am so over the clutter and extras and all the things that make the rooms look and feel cluttered and hot. I think this week I'm going to focus on slimming things down. Since it's Zone 2 Living, Dining, Front Entry it will work very well, as these are the main rooms we live in and the ones that currently appear a little to 'heavy' with stuff.
I need to be sure and dust the fans as well as the furniture and chair rails. John vacuumed deeply last week.
And while I'm puttering around the living room, it's a grand time to sort out what books I want to read. I've got a desire to pick up several different ones right now and they are in various spots on the shelves. I mean, it is work to find them all...I knew you'd feel sympathy for me.
I want to reduce the impact of the heat as much as I possibly can, so we'll be diligent in pulling curtains over the sun facing windows. Thankfully my house faces east/west so we can have curtains open on one side or the other and not live like mushrooms in semi-darkness all the while. I will also try to limit how much cooking is done, especially right now while I don't have a working exhaust fan to vent heat outdoors. I've planned my menu to be hearty enough to keep us filled but not so heavy that we swelter. I think this week, too will be a good one for making frozen drinks, either sodas or lemonade or orange drinks or good old iced water. I'll encourage everyone to drink more fluids.
It also means I'll need to be out in the earliest mornings to do my few little garden chores. I shouldn't have to water, if the rain promised comes in, but I will need to be sure to check for pests and see what I can do to prevent further damage.
I need to ask John again if he will please drill holes in my bin so I can plant the sweet potatoes and again if he will please get the Sevin from his shed so I can dust the tomato plants. I don't have a clue where he put it in there or I'd just fetch it myself.
If I'm smart, I'll plan ahead early this week and know what lunch will be for the kiddos on Thursday. That would be a good day to have a bowl of gelatin ready for them to eat. To perhaps offer them a fruit smoothie to drink for snack...Yep. I need to plan this part of the week now.
Kitchen:
There's not much I can do in the kitchen really except focus hard on using the toaster oven, microwave and slow cooker. No oven usage this week if I can possibly avoid it. Not even running the stove top nor the toaster oven overly long. The amount of heat appliances can make is really not noticed any other time of the year, but boy does it make an impact this time of year.
Pull 'cold' recipes to intersperse into our menus.
Personal/Leisure:
Pull books to read. I have several I'm interested in re-reading at present but they are scattered on the shelves. I'll gather them this week.
Reading, coloring.
A full-on Pedicure and Manicure.
And that along with routine maintenance housework should be a gracious plenty.
6 comments:
Terri, thanks so much for adding us to your prayer list for this past week. Greg's surgery went great. He's back to work tomorrow, but the little bit of mowing he did this morning wore him out, so it's probably a good thing that Tuesday is a holiday.
Thursday this week I get my twin nephews for a few days. I did meal plans and activity plans for the time they're here. Easy meals, and loads of snacks. Those boys are ALWAYS hungry.
This afternoon I hooked up the meat grinder to the Kitchen Aid for my first time. I had cooked the two packages of bacon ends, reserving just a bit raw that I ground into a pound of ground beef. Also tossed in a tiny bit of jalapeno, and the sample piece we fried up was delicious. Those burgers are ready to be grilled for supper tomorrow night.
I'm with you on hibernating as much as possible during the heat and humidity. I call it "sweating season". Fortunately we've had moderate temps, but the humidity has begun, so even 80s are heavy and unpleasant.
Lily days at the local nursery will start on Wednesday, so I'll be sure to send you some picks of the white ones!
When we lived in Texas and dealt with that kind of heat, I would often sit my slow cooker on the back porch table to cook, so that even that heat wasn't in the house.
When it's really hot I find I can get away with more salads (pasta-tuna salad, green salad with steak or chicken, taco salad, or Cobb salad with cut-up breaded chicken strips cooked that morning, boiled egg, bacon and cheese as well as romaine.) I also find my husband is happy with sandwiches for dinner -- BLTs, chicken salad, tuna salad, as long as the meal is filled out with a side like potato salad, macaroni salad, fries made in the toaster oven, or similar. Summers when I was a girl, a few times a summer we would have ice cream sundaes for Sunday night supper. Mom would put out ice cream, fruit, all kinds of toppings and we could make our own. It felt like a big indulgence. We ate healthy most of the time and a sundae like that would really fill us up. (This may not work well at all with your blood sugar, though.)
Cindy, I've done that when cooking collard greens. They taste so good but are soooo smelly, lol. I don't have an outlet on the patio or either porch. I've had to set a table out in the past to do the collard greens. I'll keep that in mind though.
It's definitely time to pull out my summer heat menus!
Tammy, I expect it will take Greg far longer to recover than he supposes. Surgery is no small matter even if it's largely outpatient. The thing is he feels fine while resting, and then thinks he can get up and be busy. I know you will enjoy your nephew's visit.
I've been looking at getting attachments for my KitchenAid mixer. I use the mixer all of the time and it seems I would use it even more if I bought the right attachments to go with it.
Terri - The only two attachments we have are the grinder and pasta maker.
Greg got the grinder years ago, and now that I have used it, I think I'll use it more often.
I haven't used the pasta maker yet, though we love fresh homemade pasta.
Tammy & Terri - I too have the meat grinder attachment for the KitchenAid. I used to have the ice cream thing too but never used it. The grinder I use for making meat spread. The roast is cooked in the slowcooker, then cooled and the meat and other ingredients are run through the grinder.
Cindi - we are in Oklahoma so I completely identify with the Texas heat and the need for cool menus. We have had a couple of 100+ days so far and we are staying at just under 100 most days lately. We've had more thunderstorms and rain lately though, which is kind of unusual for this late.
Karla, I've thought I'd like that grinder attachment. Had the ice cream thing but it took up space in the freezer (the canister I mean) so I finally got rid of it. I had the juicer attachment but threw away an important part of the thing that makes it work...I've thought I'd like to have the shredders/graters, too.
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