Barbecued Cookies

And the Summer Kitchen solution.

It’s a hot prairie summer night. When you live in a non-airconditioned house like we are, you avoid using the oven at all costs.

So why on earth would we choose to make a dinner consisting of homemade pizza and a baked dessert?

Pizza famously requires very high temperatures to heat the stone and crisp up the crust. Cookies conjure a cozy curl-up-next-to-the-fire kind of nibble. You may think we’re in for a sweaty toss and turn night but we have discovered a little trick. We know it’s entirely possible and perfect to bake outside in nothing fancier than a BBQ oven.

Cooking outside of the house reminds me of a strategy my ancestors used. My great grandparents joined a wave of settlers from Southern Ukraine immigrating to Southern Manitoba in the late 1800s. They moved to Canada to start again, a government agreement in place to “settle” the land but to live autonomously.

The extremes of a prairie climate were no surprise to these folks as their previous home was in a similar environment. The smartest “keep the house cool” strategy they brought with them was to build a Summer Kitchen.

This was a small one-room building erected beside the farmhouse. It had a cookstove and counters with multiple windows to allow for a cross-breeze. (I dearly hope those windows were screened to hold bloodsucking mosquitos at bay.)

I submit to you that this is one of the reasons most Canadians own a BBQ. Your outdoor kitchen space is a way to escape either a hot stale home or a frigidly A/C’d domicile!

Tonight we are emulating this strategy with our barbecue. We prepare the thin St. Louis Style crust pizza indoors while the pizza stone…

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