Small kitchens can get hot, fast, especially in the summer. Do you have a fan? Do you keep your windows open? Crank the AC? Let us know your tricks...
The ultimate tip might be to avoid turning on your oven. Ours takes a long time to cool down and is the number one culprit in heating up our little kitchen. If we're baking a cake or cookies, we try to do it early in the day, so the kitchen has time to cool off before we have to be in there for an extended period of time, making dinner.
We also find that opening our kitchen window isn't enough; we need the airflow from one room to the next, so we have to open a window in the living room to get things circulating.
But we're eyeing a pretty, old-fashioned fan for the countertop. Something like the one in this charming photo of Eudora Welty's kitchen in Mississippi:
So what do you do? Do you have any tips for keeping the kitchen cool and comfortable?
Related: Conscientious Cook: The Cost of Running Kitchen Appliances
(Image: Flickr member dominic's pics, licensed for use under Creative Commons)
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Keeping cool (I'm in Austin) was at the top of my list of priorities for designing a new kitchen for my condo. I did a few things:
Invested in an induction cooktop - I didn't have a gas line to the kitchen, and I got a great discount - so not so bad in the long run much, much cooler while cooking.
Moved the oven and referigerator so that heat can escape out a door opening - amazing how much better it is now. A fan for air circulation would probably help in much the same way - if you could direct some of that hot air OUT. Also, unintended benefit of scoring a convection oven floor model is that it blows cool air out when it's on.
I bake after dinner, and try to make things that don't require heat at all - gazpacho, for one, has been a regular thing during this crazy hot summer.