I’ve been anticipating the sweltering heat of summer for weeks now! Although I prefer the warmth of summer to the chill of winter, I do have to change the ways that I do certain household chores – like cooking.
When the stove or oven is turned on, it is heating up your house. This isn’t something that you really want to do when it’s 95-plus degrees outside. But unless you want to live on sandwiches and take-out, what are your options?
1. Plan ahead.
This isn’t really fun, but it is the easiest way to cut down on how often you have the oven on in the summer. Plan your meals weekly, and cook as much as you can in advance. I prefer do the cooking at night, or on cooler, rainy days. As an example, I buy chicken in huge packages. I’ll bake some chicken for one or two meals (leftovers are very common at my house) and then boil the rest. I’ll make chicken salad, barbecue chicken, pizza, etc. with the leftover chicken. We don’t even need to reheat the chicken salad.
2. Eat more sandwiches and salads and think outside of the box.
It’s summer, fresh fruits and vegetables are in abundant supply. Make a smoothie. Whip up some hummus, or another dip that doesn’t require any cooking, and enjoy that with a salad.
3. Use the crockpot, toaster oven and microwave and griddle or grill.
If you want a home-cooked meal, but don’t want to heat up your entire house, plug in the crockpot and throw in some ingredients. (I did a post earlier about how crockpots really do use less power than ovens.) Toaster-ovens can heat things like toast, french fries, fish sticks, etc. Great for an easy last-minute meal and they aren’t as big as an oven. Microwaves take less time to cook food, so they would put less heat into your house. Griddles can quickly cook several pancakes, eggs or sandwiches in the same time it would take to fry one sandwich on the stovetop.
4. Try to go meatless one or two nights a week
While I’m a big fan of eating salads with meals, I don’t mean just eat salads. There are lots of varied and extremely tasty vegan and vegetarian options that are just as filling as meat. Meat typically takes longer to cook, so if you aren’t eating meat, then you aren’t using your oven for quite as long on those evenings.
5. Cook in the evenings and mornings
I know, there are times when you will have or want to cook on super-hot days. Try to do the bulk of your cooking at night or in the early morning, when it’s cooler. This will keep your oven and A/C from competing with each other.
These are just some of the ways we try to cut down on our oven use during the summer. Do you have any tips that I’ve missed?
