It’s unbearably hot (again!) this week, and I’m already so done with summer.
We’re in our third heat wave of the year… and it’s only the beginning of July. I’m talking record-breaking, unprecedented heat that I never imagined possible here in Brittany - let alone three times in a row.
So once again, our days are spent barricaded inside the apartment, every blind shut tight, desperately trying to keep the heat out. There’s barely any air moving. We rotate frozen towels between ourselves and our sweet dog, Sophie, and count down the hours until the sun finally begins to set.
There are two bright spots compared to the last heat wave, though.
First: we finally found a fan! Despite the nationwide fan shortage (have you seen those insane videos of people fighting to get fans ?!), we somehow managed to snag one online (on the Boulanger website) in have it delivered. It may not sound like much, but it has made sitting in our apartment just a little more bearable.
And second: the Tour de France is on! Those long afternoons trapped indoors are infinitely more enjoyable with the race playing in the background, cheering on my favorite team (go Visma–Lease a Bike!) as they tackle the Pyrenees.
In my last newsletter, I wrote about how difficult this new summer reality has been on a personal level.
What I didn’t mention is how much it affects my work, too.
When it’s this hot in our apartment, turning on the oven or even the stove is completely out of the question. Which means recipe testing and development come to a complete standstill. It’s another layer of stress that I wasn’t expecting.
Normally, this is the time of year when I start working on la rentrée (back to school) recipes: cakes and cookies for after-school snacks, wholesome lunches, easy weeknight dinners... But this year, none of that is happening.
I’ve made peace with it because, really, there’s no fighting this kind of heat. All I can do is wait for the temperatures to drop and hope that, sooner rather than later, I’ll be able to turn the oven back on.
In the meantime, our meals have one simple rule: no oven and no stove during the day.
So I thought I’d share a little roundup of the recipes we’re genuinely living on right now. These aren’t carefully curated seasonal ideas - they’re the meals we’ve been making on repeat because they’re fresh, satisfying, and don’t require adding any more heat to the apartment.
Some recipes require absolutely no cooking, while others need only a minimal amount of heat. For example, you can hard-boil eggs or cook potatoes, pasta, or rice in just 15 minutes early in the morning, before the sun gets too strong and the day’s heat sets in.
When we know a heat wave is on the way, we like to cook a big batch of pasta, rice, or potatoes ahead of time. We also hard-boil a few eggs and keep two or three cans of sardines on hand. That way, we have hearty carbohydrates and protein ready to go for the next few days, making it easy to throw together generous, satisfying salad bowls without having to turn the stove back on.
And at the end of this newsletter, you’ll find the recipe for what is perhaps my favorite summer no-cook recipe: Spicy Watermelan Salad with Feta and Mint. So good and refreshing!
Bon appétit !
No-cook recipes
Minimal cooking recipes
Chilled Zucchini Mint Soup - Cooking required: Steam sliced zucchini for 10 minutes.
Authentic Niçoise Salad - Cooking required : Boil fava beans for 2 minutes + hard-boil eggs for 10 minutes.
Rice and Tuna Salad - Cooking required : Cook rice (as per instructions package) + hard-boil eggs for 10 minutes.
French-Couscous Salad - Cooking required: Bring a pot a chicken broth to a boil.
Piemontaise Potato Salad - Cooking required : hard-boileggs + Boil potatoes for 14 minutes.
How to pick a good watermelon ?
Look for a uniform shape with regular dark green stripes and a dull look – a sign that it is ripe. Shiny watermelons are likely to be underripe.
Knock-on it: it should be firm, not soft.
Lift it up: the heavier a watermelon is for its size, the juicier and sweeter it will be.
Turn the watermelon upside down. You should see a large yellow stain which is the “ground spot”, where the watermelon was resting before being harvested. A large spot suggests it spent more time “vine ripening” and will be sweet. A small white spot indicates it was likely picked early.
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