Outdoor Cooking: Beating the Heat

baby squash

Living near the beach, as I do, means that the weather throughout the summer is generally wonderful – sunny skies, comfortably warm rather than unbearably hot. Those of us who live near the water don’t bother with air conditioning, and there tend to be only a couple of days each summer in which I wish that I did have air conditioning.

Not so this summer – nearly every day has been unbearably hot and humid, and this summer is threatening to be the hottest on record. This has made me avoid using my kitchen as much as possible. When it is 85 degrees Fahrenheit with 85% relative humidity inside the house at 8:00 in the evening, there is no way that I am adding to that heat by turning on the oven (or even the gas burners). So I told James at the beginning of the summer that I wanted a grill.

We looked around at both charcoal and gas grills and realized that perhaps this was not the right time to buy one. We really don’t have room for one at our present apartment. Although our balcony is relatively large, it is long and narrow and already filled with various chairs and other balcony paraphernalia. Adding a grill of the size that I would like (a large one with a side burner) would really make it crowded. Not to mention the fact that neither of us are particularly experienced at cooking over an open flame, and we weren’t sure that we were ready to start learning.

Luckily, while we were window-shopping at Crate and Barrel, James noticed an electric grill/griddle by Cuisinart, and we snapped it up. We set up a small card table on the balcony and started grilling. Since then, I have made perhaps one dinner per week in my kitchen (mostly salads), with the rest of our meals cooked outside on the electric grill. What a lifesaver it has been! James loved the trout I made him on the griddle side, but my favorite has been all the grilled vegetables we've enjoyed this summer, like these baby squashes!