DH requested salmon and broccoli yesterday. I'd like to grab...just a scoop of ice cream...but we haven't purchased ANY since last Summer.

I agree about sandwiches being too bready. I have hot dogs in the freezer and a can of red turkey chili...that might be our lunch today....a bunless chilidog!

Edit: Took the leftover salmon from last night and made salmon patties with tartar sauce for our big meal of the day.

Note: We're at 7600 feet. A hot day is 82F-85F...not that hot at all....and 55F at night.

Well, salads are weird right now, and I tire of them fairly soon. We dont tend to grill because it is just too hot (our patio is on the west side, and the sun blasts too much there to want to grill.) We do often use the air fryer though. Lots of things work out really good. Like any kind of meat, baked potatoes, french fries, also great for either re-heating pizza or doing the tortilla pizza thing.

I try not to run the oven much when it's above 90F but I do use the air fryer a lot in the summer heat. Grilling is out too unless we eat later than normal after it's cooled down a bit.

It's prime tomato season here so we've been having BLTs several times a week with a side of fresh sweet corn on the cob or sauteed zucchini/yellow squash.

Loaded baked potatoes done in the air fryer is also a common summer meal with a veggie or side salad. I need to remember to buy large baker potatoes when we plan these.

A lot of salads.......I'm making salad Nicoise today. And fruit - chilled melons, grapes, cherries, nectarines, etc. Also take-out I can eat chilled or at room temp. Whatever works without needing to heat the oven, although I do admit to take-and-bake pizza now and again.

No issues with sandwiches. In fact, I had a roasted chicken sandwich for dinner last night. And a big bowl of local strawberries.

I'm partial to sandwiches any time of year, but I admit to liking wheat most by far of the starches. I can go months without rice, potatoes or any of their friends and not notice, but if there's no bread, I prefer pasta, or other wheat things. And I have plenty of flour and yeast, bake late, when it's unlikely to trigger the a/c to go on, after we're done in the kitchen.

I do more open face sandwiches than two sided. But if I've had my fill of bread, I'll go deconstructed. Wrap deli slices around veggie salads or spreads, or make my fillings into a salad.

It doesn't get as hot/humid here as for many of you, and it usually cools down at night. But when it's really really hot, I turn to salads. Often a simple chopped, with lots of variety and goodies, but I love lettuce, too. Those I feed put up with it. They generally like whatever I make and are happy to help so long as they don't have to figure it out.

The beans in butternut soup was a great Summer choice. And beans are sufficient as starch to obviate the bread. Even when it was hot out, they were goid zapped and hot through.

We grill and try not to use the oven when it’s really hot (like now!). Lots of salads. Last night was London Broil (top round), potato salad and corn. I sometimes use leftover grilled beef/chicken in salads, such as Caesar with tri-tip. Tonight will be take-out.

Something I saw today. Nothing new but it sounds good, especially with good homegrown tomatoes for the salad.

Summer Chicken Cutlets

A lot of fresh fruit, salads, and cold side dishes. Not necessarily lettuce-based. Usually is something with whatever vegetables are coming in from the garden like cucumber salads. The tomatoes will start in a couple more weeks so then it will be lots of tomato-based side dishes and salads. Usually will have a little protein with it -- feta cheese on fresh taboulleh, slices of parm cheese or fresh mozzarella with a bowl of fresh tomatoes, etc. I have been known to sit down with 1/4 of a large watermelon for lunch :0)

It's more about what we don't eat: soups, stews and casseroles - IOW, foods that warm you up. I also enjoy lots of seasonal fruits.

And since we live in an area that's mostly hot, our warming foods seasons are very short here.

So, what I actually ate? I woke up early on a gonna be hot day, and was feeling kind of hungry early as well. I have plenty of food in the fridge, but didn't want bread (shocker!) or chicken or cheese (double shocker), and I didn't want anything sweet, though there's a lot of fruit. There're salads just waiting, but no. Then I espied the last of the beans in butternut soup, and that was the winner. Zapped to good and hot in one of my pretty blue and white soup bowls. The house wasn't hot yet. 76F at the thermostat and 81F in the kitchen by my Thermapen. That's pleasantly mild to me. I can wear my little pink T-shirt dress and not be cold. After I'd finished the beans, I wanted crunchy and protein, so had a few pita chips with jalapeño cheese and some spicy seafood salad.

The heat has increased enough for the a/c to go on, especially upstairs. But I think it has to be really really hot for me to start not wanting warm things. I do remember, from when I was young, being where it was much hotter, and more humid, for far longer: 38°C (100.4°F) ambient was pretty warm but okay. 40°C (104°F) was hot, 42°C (107.6°F) was tolerable, and 43°C (109.4°F)--which was normal--was just too hot! (There wasn't a/c most places--certainly not where I was--and we had to walk a lot in the direct sun.) No thanks!

porkchop, we’re having watermelon and feta salad tonight…YUM!

I would cease to function completely at those temps, pillog. I can barely move if it's over 30c. 35c and I can only lie with a wet cloth on my neck. I have never experienced 40 but I'm not sure I'd be conscious.

Floral, I'd be the same way in snow (think children of the King of Siam--I've seen several snowflakes in the desert when I was 11, and seen glaciated snow in July, and fallen-packed snow on a sunny warm day, but it's nothing like what they have on TV.). And I was young then in the 40°C+ daily. I just did an errand, and my car pegged the temperature at low 80's F (around 28° C), just nicely warm, like my kitchen. :) It's supposed to be blazing hot, but I think we got some cooling from the ocean.

For how many of you is it the will, rather than the absolute heat reading? I'm supposed to make pies today, and it's not the ovens that are putting me off but the manhandling the FP to mix up the crust and the rolling out of the chilled dough. All easy, but I have more will to take a nap than make the danged pies...

plllog, our temp says 93 right now, and at least we don’t have the humidity they do elsewhere. I well remember Midwest humidity as a kid, and it could be truly miserable.

On a side note regarding the heat, we just had our roof redone. Not fun with all the noise, but the hardest part for me was seeing those guys up there in the heat.🥵😖

LOL, I hear you about the pies!

We had a heat wave here and the temps neared 100F, with the ever present Midwestern humidity in the 80% or above range. Even if I wanted to grill something, it was just too hot to stand outside next to a grill.

We do have air conditioning and the geothermal system we have keeps the cost relatively low, so I cook whatever I cook the rest of the year. I baked 12 cheesecakes yesterday for my grand-niece's graduation open house and it was fine, although I usually try to avoid turning the ovens on when it's really hot. I had both ovens going too, LOL.

We have salads because I have a big garden but I just picked the last head of iceburg lettuce that hadn't bolted in the heat. I have one head of romaine left growing but lots of cucumbers, napa, zucchini, mizuna, spinach, kale and green beans, so maybe a salad Nicoise or a spinach salad. BLTs will have to wait for another couple of weeks, although I have a pork belly in the freezer waiting to be cured and smoked. No soup or chili, it just seems wrong somehow. I don't know why, I still bake bread in the summer, so why not soup? Beats me. (shrug) I'm not a big sandwich person so I sometimes do "open face". Elery would rather have nachos or hummus and naan or anything he can dip, especially if it has cheese in it.

Because I have every small appliance known to man, I think, I can use my small Nesco, the air fryer, Elery sometimes uses the Instant Pot (which I hate). We have a sous vide thing, an electric skillet and electric griddle, the ubiquitous microwave, a combo griddle/grill outside that runs on propane, a smoker and a Ninja pizza oven. The last three are outside, where I don't want to go, but next week is supposed to only be in the 80s.

Annie

Our summers regularly have a run of a couple of weeks or more where the daily maximum temperature is over 38C (the old 100F) and often over 40C. We usually eat cold foods such as a charcuterie and cheese board with various pickled things like sun dried tomatoes, olives, cornichons, etc with crackers or flatbreads. Or salads like rice salad, pasta salad, potato salad etc with maybe a grilled meat for dinner.

OTOH, we really like the traditional northern hemisphere Christmas dinner at Christmas, whatever the temperature. I have been known to cook it indoors with a fan blowing full blast on me, and a couple of times we even wheeled the barbecue through the house (we built an addition to our house which has a large family room with French doors on either side opening onto a deck on one side and a very wide verandah on the other) to the slightly cooler side of the house and cooked the turkey and potatoes in it :-)

Fun fact: My autocorrect which had a problem with "cornichons" suggested "unicorns" LOL

It's not a question of will. I'm in Italy at the moment and a couple of days in the high 30s I've literally been ill with the heat. It affects my digestion, my sleep, my skin, my energy, everything. My fingers are like sausages. My ankles puff up. My face bloats. And I have zero appetite. It isn't imaginary. On the other hand I hate cold too! I function best at a nice mid 20s. 28 counts as a heatwave in the UK, although we're getting hotter every year. In cold weather you can dress warmly. In hot weather you're stuck. AC is a help, if you have it, but the air never seems fresh to me.

So my answer to what I eat in hot weather is 'not much'. But I drink gallons.

We don't usually or regularly have scorching heat here in the PNW, but when it does get really hot, my favorite to have is gazpacho. Salad in liquid form.

The shepherds in very hot, very humid Spain made gazpacho so they wouldn't have to light a fire. That's why the stale bread--it's already cooked. ;)

I made dough for a double crust, yesterday, and picked a couple of lemons (and put some zest in the crusts), so maybe the blueberry will get baked.

I love gazpachoo but have only made it occasionally because by the time it's made and chilled the weather has often changed and we don't want a cold soup.

“In cold weather you can dress warmly. In hot weather you're stuck.”

Agree…much easier to get comfortable for me in cold weather. I really hate heat. Summer and early fall can be hard here in SoCal when I long for cool, crisp weather. Even October can be HOT. No problem with the rest of the year. I love 65-70 and sunny.

Unicorns on a charcuterie tray? Now there's an idea, although they may be somewhat difficult to find. (grin)

My mother hated the heat and used to say that she could always put more clothes on when it was cold but there is only a certain amount you can take off without getting arrested!

Annie

I'm like Flora with hot weather except for eating. Not a lot stops me eating LOL . When it's very hot, I"m not adverse to a lovely curry or some lebanese food. I love a mezze platter or we go Greek with some lovely greek salads and souvlaki. As long as I can get in the sea for a 'plouf' as they say here - a good dunking - I'm ok.

My husband loves anything cold aith mayonnaise... salmon, chicken, lamb, beef..... he's easy to feed. He loves tomato and green salads with everything, every day so I can't complain. He's not picky.

The French eat a lot of fish and rice - I hate the combo - it's like old folks food.... but it's very light.

" by the time it's made and chilled the weather has often changed"

I make it with a base of Knudsens Very Veggie juice that I keep in the refrigerator year round, cold cukes, cold red peppers, and other cold veggies, maybe a sweet onion is the only room temp veggie. So it's edible as a cold soup without much or minimal chilling. I suppose if your weather cools off within the hour?

Gazpacho, JC's Andalusian

INGREDIENTS

3 lbs deep red ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded and diced -- strain and reserve the seed liquid, optional
2 Persian cucumbers, or half of an English cucumber, peeled, seeded and diced small
1 large bell pepper, seeded, pith removed and diced small
3-4 inch-thick slices of stale French or Italian white bread, crusts removed
2-4 cloves garlic, smashed
1 medium onion, chopped fine
3-6 sprigs parsley, stems removed, chopped
1/4 cup sherry vinegar
1/2 cup Spanish EVOO (use 1/3 c or less Spanish EVOO (Spanish is best for the flavor) and the rest Lite Olive or Safflower oil)
3/4 tsp Spanish paprika
1/2 tsp cumin
salt to taste, up to 1 tsp, I'd use 1/4-1/2 but am not a big salter

DIRECTIONS

JC's Andalusian Style Gazpacho (American version--adapted from an English language version of a Spanish recipe)

Garnish, chopped small (1/4"): Grape tomatoes, or other highly flavorful ones, cucumber, colorful bell pepper, flat leaf parsley. You can also do chopped marcona almonds, or cold Spanish charcuterie. I usually just do scallion greens.

If you can liquify the peels in a high speed blender and want to add them for the nutrients, go ahead. Just don't let them be unpleasant texture bits in the soup.

You can mince the veg instead of dicing if you don't want to pound as much, but I think dicing works better.

In a large mortar (or heavy mixing bowl), soak the bread in the tomato liquid or a little water until it's soft. Use the pestle (or a muddler, small potato masher, or a small ladle with a weight taped into its bowl) to mash the wet bread with the garlic and salt and enough of the oil and vinegar to make a loose paste. Add the paprika and parsley and mash some more, adding oil and vinegar as necessary to keep it pasty rather than doughy. Add the vegetables and the rest of the oil and vinegar, and pound until it's reasonably smooth. Add cool water until it's the consistency you favor and store in a heavy tureen or crock in a cool corner until you're ready to serve.

Check the seasoning before you serve. Put the garnish on the table for people to help themselves, or make up bowls with toppings.

It was truly hot here yesterday, and all I wanted was carbs. I ate well rounded and nutritious but wanted pasta and sweets.

Yep. The weather can cool off pretty fast. But I also don't necessarily have the fresh ingredients on hand. I'd need to shop for them.

It's been in the 90's here...very unusual. I made a BIG batch of Albacore tuna salad...it was half veggies...with 2 cups of chopped celery and a cup of diced yellow onions added to two cans of tuna. Then homemade bread with mayo/lettuce/tomato. We have left overs for today!

Yesterday...the smoke was so bad!!! It's drifting in from Spokane WA. The air quality was at it's worst in years!

We like a shrimp and canned June peas salad, also taco salad.