Eskimo logic

When the Eskimos are cold and hungry, do they eat ice cream?

No, I imagine that they will try to satisfy their cravings and heat up their bodies at the same time. You know, so they won’t freeze to death (I’m not an expert on Eskimos, though. Once, I went to dogsledding in Fairbanks, Alaska, in the middle of January).

They would make a fire, cook something up, and avoid frost bite.

For some reason, that logic doesn’t translate to the hot, sticky sauna that is my site.

Every day, I come home for lunch and my host mom is complaining about the heat — how we live in an oven (We frequently debate whether it’s an oven or a sauna.)

Every day, I come home for lunch and my host mom has prepared a hot soup, hot entrée, and room temperature juice (keep in mind that room temperature is a little warmer than room temperature back home).

There’s a gap here.

They have the capabilities to make food colder – freezer and refrigerator, but they don’t have the capabilities to make the room drastically colder (a sometimes-functioning fan but no air conditioning).

When the meal is done, they continue to complain about the heat, perhaps not realizing that while they eat they could also be cooling themselves down. I understand that it would be difficult to survive on cold foods. But they could make a few adjustments.

What I think is the cause of this is a mentality that you can’t change your present situation. Whatever you have, wherever you are born, you just have to play with the cards you are dealt.

The people here don’t have a problem complaining about the heat and humidity, but if they used half the time they spend complaining about the weather and looked for small ways to cool down around the lunch table, there would be a lot less kvetching.

I think this is starting to hit on a much deeper cultural, social, economic condition that I don’t want to explore here, so I’ll just start my list of possible solutions.

Gazpacho or other type of chilled soup – This is a perfect appetizer to a midday meal, a cool soup with a bunch of vegetables. You could follow this with a warm dish if you would like. Plus, you can make a big batch at the beginning of the week and be satisfied for the entire week. I made this for my family. They liked it, and I passed the recipe around to a few other people in town.

Chilling the juice – They make juice for every meal. Why not just make a double batch during breakfast and put half in the refrigerator.

Cold cuts – Not all the time. But every once in a while.

Those are just a few ideas I had to get started. If you have other ideas, you can leave them in the comments section.

Maybe I’ll start teaching cooking classes?