It was 97 degrees by noon on Tuesday last week. At four that afternoon I was standing in front of the oven with a pan of chicken thighs, and I put them back in the fridge. The oven has been off ever since, and I don't plan to turn it on again until September.
Our kitchen is open to the living room, and when the oven runs, the whole space warms up while the AC fights it. So the next seven days, Tuesday through Monday, became our first no-oven week of the year: seven dinners from the grill, the air fryer, the Crock-Pot and a couple of burners.
The seven dinners
- Tuesday: those same chicken thighs, in the air fryer instead. Eight bone-in thighs, four per basket, at 380°F for about 25 minutes. Corn on the cob in the microwave and a watermelon.
- Wednesday: Matt grilled burgers on the kettle when he got home from work, and I did plain fries in one air fryer basket and sweet potato fries in the other.
- Thursday (office day): pork carnitas in the Crock-Pot, started at 7:45 a.m. and crisped in the cast iron for five minutes at dinnertime.
- Friday: fend-for-yourself Friday. Leftovers, plus cheese quesadillas on the electric griddle for anyone who wanted one. Everyone wanted one.
- Saturday: Matt grilled smoked sausage and corn. I made potato salad at seven in the morning, while the kitchen was still cool, and let it chill all day. Biscuit spent the afternoon flat on the kitchen tile, the coolest spot in the house.
- Sunday: carnitas rice bowls with black beans, cheese, pickled onions and salsa. The rice cooked in the Instant Pot, which barely warms the room.
- Monday: no cooking at all. Chicken salad sandwiches from a Kroger rotisserie chicken, cucumber slices, chips and the last of the watermelon.
Eli ate plain chicken off the bone on Tuesday, plain fries on Wednesday, a quesadilla on Friday, and rice with cheese on Sunday. He did not touch the carnitas, the sausage or the chicken salad, and that is a normal week for Eli.
Planning a week like this took one extra step at the Sunday reset. Before I write a single dinner on the plan, I write down which appliance each night gets, so I don't end up with three air fryer dinners in a row and the Crock-Pot sitting idle. Tuesday and Thursday are office days, so one of them always gets the Crock-Pot. Saturday belongs to Matt and the grill whether I ask or not. Everything else gets filled in around those.
The groceries
The week's total, which covers breakfasts, lunches for three kids who are home all day now and everything else, came to $268.00: Aldi $176.92, Kroger pickup $49.71 and a Tom Thumb stop for the weekly ad's pork shoulder and watermelon plus milk and yogurt, $41.37. That's $18 over our $250 budget.
The dinners weren't the problem. They averaged about the same as always. It was everything around them: three lunches at home instead of packed ones, popsicles, Gatorade, a second bag of frozen fruit. The first weeks of summer do this every year, and I'll write more about where the extra goes once I have a full month of receipts.
What went sideways
Wednesday's fries. I overloaded the plain-fry basket because Eli had asked for "a lot," and they steamed instead of crisping. Don't crowd the pan is the first rule anybody learns on a line, and I ignored it because the basket looked like it could take more. It couldn't. I ended up doing a second round while the burgers sat waiting and Matt watched me with his arms crossed. Now the fries go in two rounds before the burgers even hit the grill.
The other small surprise: the air fryer isn't heat-free. It blows warm air out the back, right at the coffee maker. I turned it so it vents toward the window, and it's still nothing like having the oven on.
Is it actually cheaper?
I honestly don't know yet. On Friday I bought a $25 plug-in meter, and I'm going to spend the rest of June plugging in the air fryer, the Crock-Pot, the Instant Pot and the griddle to see what each one costs per dinner. The oven is wired into the wall, so I'll have to estimate that one. Whatever the numbers say, the kitchen at five o'clock last week stayed close to the 76 on the thermostat, and in a Dallas June that's worth a lot.
Receipt check: $268.00 for the week, $18 over. Same plan this week, with a couple more no-cook nights.
