Beat the heat, not your meat, part 2

Yesterday’s post about the heatwave turned into a post about gardening. So here’s what I was going to post yesterday.

Temperatures in the high 30s and low 40s (Centigrade) have most people running air conditioners pretty much  non stop. We all say we don’t know what we’d do without the air conditioner.

But the house I grew up in didn’t have one until I was in my teenage years, and we managed to survive without melting or bursting into flames. We did it all again the year the air conditioner broke down a day before the heatwave started and couldn’t be fixed for three months.

So here’s what we used to do every summer:

• go to the beach or a public swimming pool. Swimming is a great way to stay cool. Remember to avoid getting sunburn (YouTube video)
• go to the Linear Park along the Torrens River. The river valley is partly sheltered from the sun, and having water in it helps cool it down. We’d also play in shallower parts of the river, even though it was more polluted than it is now.
• go to the movies, shopping centers, or other air conditioned places. Movies and shopping centres are also a source of entertainment.
• have long, cold baths.
• lots of cold drinks. Every summer the fridge was full of jugs of water and various soft drinks. These days my fridge usually contains some beer, white wine and home made iced coffee (see recipe below).
• the house has a wine cellar, we’d spend time down there reading books.
• fans, fans, fans. Ceiling fans, pedestal fans, hand held fans. Anything that gets the air moving helps evaporate sweat, which cools you down.
• wear damp clothing or wrap a wet towel around yourself.
• in the evening when it gets a bit cooler, open windows and doors and let the relatively colder air remove some of the heat from the house.

There were probably other things we did as well, although that’s all I can think of at the moment. These days you’d probably add “drive around in an air conditioned car” to the list if you had no air conditioning at home.

And here’s that iced coffee recipe:

• Put coffee grounds in cold water in the fridge. Cold brewed coffee is sweeter than that brewed with hot water, and I prefer it for iced coffee.
• At least 12 hours later, filter the coffee. I use a plunger pot which makes this part really easy. I tried pouring it through filter paper, it did the job but was a bit tricky.
• Mix the resulting coffee with milk. I use a 1:1 ratio, of course you can do it however you like. You might even like it without milk.
• Add ice, cream, ice cream, etc. to taste. Usually I just throw in a couple of ice cubes to keep it cold.

And there you have it – ways to beat the heat if you don’t have air conditioning.

Beat the heat, not your meat.

So much for my plan to blog at least twice a week! This week I’ve been house, cat and garden sitting while my brother is in Sydney. Also we’ve had unprecedented high November temperatures this week. We have weather like this most years but usually in late January to early March.

My brother and his girlfriend are vegans and their garden is their main source of food, so it’s very important that the plants survive at least until they get back (then if they die it’s not my fault). They said to water once a day, but after a few things wilted I stepped that up to twice a day. And it seems to be working (although a few things under a gap in the shadecloth did die off). I have been using a watering can so as to avoid breaking South Australia’s water restrictions and also because it makes it easy to get the water to the roots.

Watching things grow in the garden here has inspired me to see what I can grow at home. The wife and I live in a tiny upstairs apartment with a small paved courtyard at the bottom of the stairs, so there’s nowhere we can really dig. We’re going to try some potted plants in the courtyard and maybe some indoor plants. The plan:

• Step 1: do some research about what plants are likely to work.
• Step 2: source the plants, pots, etc. (as cheaply as possible, we’re on a budget)
• Step 3: grow stuff
• Step 4: profit in the form of lower grocery bills. Hopefully the savings here will outweigh what we spend on plants.

hmm, what was going to be a post on the hot weather turned into a post about gardening. The heat related post will come tomorrow.