"cooling" news and stories

With the heat wave continuing on, with little relief from the high temperatures in sight, we need to think of things to do that will cool us down. And by "things to do," I mean "things to eat." When it's hot out, it's hard to muster up the energy to cook and air-conditioned restaurants start to look very tempting, especially if you live in an area that is dealing with a power crunch.

With temperatures well over 100F, even reaching above 110F, I've been relying on salads and cold drinks, like iced tea and blended coffee drinks, though I have gone through quite a bit of very spicy salsa (on the cooling down by heating up theory), too.

What are some of the foods that you're eating that keep you cool when it gets hot out? Gazpacho or another chilled soup? Refreshing agua fresca? Watermelon?

Faced with the prospect of revolutionary solar-powered thin-film technology, we can think of only one thing: beer. The folks at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed micrometer-thin solar cells and heating/cooling devices that could be attached to all kinds of surfaces, including walls, cars or bottles. These would be way less cumbersome than the self-cooling beer cans I posted about a few months back. The solar powered thin films would also require no moving parts. In their press releases, the Rensselaer researchers mention self cooling soda bottles, but we know what they're thinking...

[Via SCI FI Tech and vnunet]

No, it's not just to cool yourself. Our friends over at Engadget recently posted about the new Instant Cool Can from Tempra, a can with a built in cooling system that can drop the temperature of a beverage by 30º F in only a few minutes. The obvious application is beer, and according to Engadget, Miller will be the first to use the cans. The base of the can contains a drying agent that, when activated, causes a gel in the base to draw heat from the can into a heat sink. There's a lot is going on in the bottom half of this can, which explains why it looks like a 16 ounce can but only holds about 10.5 ounces. Obviously these cans will be more expensive, and for only 10.5 ounces of beer, it seems like smaller "pony" bottles are still the way to go if you want your cold one to stay that way until the end. Besides, I don't think anyone really cares what temperature "the champagne of beers" is served at anyway.

Now that you have finished your cake, let's review the steps. You read your recipe carefully, preheated the oven, made the streusel, greased the pan, creamed the butter, added the eggs, finished the batter and baked it. It's time to taste it.

The cake is moist, rich and delicious. It isn't a light, spongy cake, but it is very tender and does not seem heavy or dense. I don’t know if I’ve ever had a cake with this much streusel on it – in fact, there was nearly as much streusel as batter in the recipe! I loved how simply pressing the streusel mixture into big chunks before spreading it on the cake resulted in professional looking and tasting topping. Aside from the hitch with the incorrect baking time being given in the recipe, I didn’t have any problems and found the recipe to be easy to follow. This cake is a little too rich for everyday breakfast, but it is a great choice for special occasions and is classic comfort food. The recipe says this serves 10-12, but I far prefer to cut it into 16 smaller slices.

Thanks for watching this "episode" of Cooking Live with Slashfood!

[Photo by Nicole Weston]