Summer Food 101

Claire Whitley | Crumbs

Stay cool and add a little health to a summer diet

The summer heat in Moscow tends to hit in waves. One week it will be rainy and stormy and immediately following the temperature can get up to 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

In apartments without air conditioning, it makes cooking an evening meal that much more unappealing. So leave the oven off and try some foods that will keep you cool and taste good.

Breakfast

One of the coolest foods there is would be ice cream. However, ice cream isn’t exactly a nutritious meal. It’ll feel good in the heat, but you’ll still be hungry. An easy solution for breakfast is Greek yogurt and fruit.

For breakfast, fresh sliced strawberries and raspberries with honey or vanilla flavored yogurt is always a good option. These ingredients could easily be turned into a fruit smoothie with some added milk and ice with a dash of protein powder or spinach to make it a fuller meal.

Other than fruit, good breakfasts can be simply cereal with milk, but try to stay away from the sweet chocolate or fruity flavored cereals. People also eat hardboiled eggs for breakfast, which is smart for anyone interested in packing on the protein. If you boil the eggs the night before, it won’t be necessary to heat up the kitchen in the morning.

Lunch or dinner

Afternoons and early mornings are always a lot warmer and harder to stay cool in. Sometimes it is impossible to leave the oven or stovetop off entirely when making meals for the warm parts of the day. However, if people want to bear a little additional heat, there are some great recipes worth pursuing.

Salads of any kind are one of the simplest ways to keep cool. Everything remains in the fridge until it is time to be used, which makes ingredients themselves a little bit cooler. With some heat over the stove top it is easy to whip up a pasta salad or cook some chicken to make a simple salad a little bit more extravagant, and less veggie-like.

There are also cold soups that can be made, but which do require a little bit more work with heat in order to be chilled. And honestly, any leftovers can be eaten cold if reheating is more unappealing than a warm supper.

Drinks

One of the best drinks to have in the summer is iced tea.

There is that stuff in the store that has lemon or honey or raspberry flavoring, but iced tea made at home is a thousand times better. It can be made sweet or lemony as well, and it would have less sugar than the stuff in the coolers at the grocery store. One of the most fun things about iced tea is it can be any kind of tea. I could go into my kitchen and make iced earl grey or chai or even jasmine tea in no time at all. 

Iced tea is best made when the tea cools down naturally or in the fridge rather than putting ice in it right off the boil. Not only does letting it cool make it less watered down, but it also helps with the flavor if the tea bags are left in to let it steep for longer. Another thing, don’t add sugar before the tea is steeped. It’ll all settle and would likely get all over the tea bags.

Other drinks to help cool off are things like lemonade, cranberry juice, limeade, apple cider or just water. I don’t suggest milk or any form of it to cool off. It is a little thick and doesn’t quite hit the spot in the summer heat, not to mention leaving it in the sun next to you while sunbathing makes it spoil.

Take from these whatever works with your lifestyle and get out in the summer sun, but stay cool.

Claire Whitley can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @Cewhitley24