This is a new one for me - forecast from yesterday showing “Smoke”; don’t believe I’ve ever seen that one before.
It smells like a campfire outside, which got me wondering, with those temps, but a hazy sun it it hot enough to melt chocolate bars & marshmallows? Could I make Sidewalk S’mores?
Fried eggs, s’mores, what else can we cook on the concrete griddle?
We’ve been getting “smoke” forecasts here in southern Ontario for the last couple of days due to wildfires. Your smoke may be from the same fires. Yesterday actually smelled faintly of wood smoke outside, though not today. There is some rain in the forecast which should help.
The smoke is really bad now in SE Michigan. I went outside this morning and thought "does one of my neighbors have a bonfire going or are they burning leaves, first thing in the morning? Then I realized it’s from Canada. Last Summer when Canada had forest fires it never got this bad-- I would only catch a bare whiff of woodsmoke on the worst air quality days. I was just out on an errand and everything looks hazy, like a layer of fog. Last night when the sun was setting there was the most eerie looking yellow glow in the sky.
It was bad this morning and worse now. I’ve misplaced my fire-trackers, so I wasn’t sure if this was Canada again or maybe the NJ pine barrens.
I don’t love this one:
I’m on an airplane, soon to take off, and the pilot said our visibility will be limited at both ends of the flight due to smoke.
What’s burning where?
Wildfires in Canada.
Big ****ing fires…
Fire and smoke map:
Big ****ing fires, eh
(There, I fixed it for you! 
)
You forgot “Sorry!”
Looks like Armageddon here, and we’re in New Jersey.
I made the mistake of grilling tonight, I had to wear a mask.
I used to live on Guam and it was never not hot. The coolest it ever got was just “not as hot as usual” when it was overcast and/or raining. (And if it rained then you were too wet to enjoy the relative coolness.)
You learned quickly that dark, solid surfaces, like dark metal or tires, they were always hot. Hot enough to burn you, like touching a stove.
I wouldn’t cook directly on the sidewalk, but a dark nonstick frying pan sitting in the sun for a while could probably cook food, even if it didn’t get quite as hot as you’d normally cook at. Probably more like cooking on “low”.
Of course, you can use a solar cooker to actually cook food much like a normal oven or stove. But that’s different than simply using a regular surface that has gotten hot from sitting in the sun too long on a high temperature day; you are artificially focusing sunlight into a single spot to generate a lot of heat, heat you can also potentially control, and it ends up just being another kind of cooking device.
Lots of wildfires burning across Colorado - we’ve been having smoke issues for weeks now, though right at the moment, it’s in the tolerable range. Or at least better than it was last week!
Since this is technically a Cafe Society thread, my best guess is that even given how hot it is (thanks global warning! [/s]) most bread structures require around 200F internal temps. I don’t think that’s quite accessible au-natural. I was pondering how hot the interior of a well sealed iron dutchie could get outside in direct sunlight given placement as soon as temps reached ambient, but I don’t think we could manage it without at least some sort of additional “passive” healing, like a solar oven to provide additional assistance.
I remember the Top Gear team trying to cook eggs on a griddle attached to the back of one of their cars during the Middle East special. It didn’t work as expected.
Southern Ontario is still in Orange Alert for air quality, for the second or maybe third day, but it’s only effective through tonight.
but that’s a lot higher than meats
A baseball stadium field can reach 120° - 150° & I’m guessing a metal pan in the sun can get even hotter. Besides, isn’t that baseball game staple - hot dogs already cooked & just need to be heated? I guess you just gotta go bunless.
Internal bread temperatures can be baked to 200F or even less, but for bread to attain the structure we’re accustomed to, you need “oven spring” – which happens around 400-450F. This is for yeast breads. You can bake quick breads (baking powder and/or soda combined with an acid) at 350F. Even pancakes are usually baked on a griddle at around 375F.
Egg whites begin to set around 145°F. I bet that’s obtainable on a dark surface in the sun.