Serve it cold and boozy!

It's hot enough to make me want to belt the next person who suggests frying an egg on the sidewalk. That means it's time for another book of chilled recipes! Today's specimen is Serve It Cold! A Cookbook of Delicious Cold Dishes (June Crosby and Ruth Conrad Bateman, 1969).

Of course the book has all the cold molded salads, like the elaborate fish (actually made out of crab!) on the cover. What really struck me about the book, though, was the soup chapter. The authors clearly saw cold soup as being a good cover for day-drinking. When the weather is this hot, why fight it?

Gazpacho recipes usually call for sherry vinegar or red or white wine vinegar, but Belmar Hotel thought it would be more fun just to go for the wine itself, and Crosby and Bateman seem to agree.

If you prefer paprika with your wine and tomato concoctions, there is also a Hungarian Tomato Soup.

And if you feel like giving up and straight-up admitting the cold soup is just an excuse to day drink, then there's Bloody Mary Soup.

If there are some teetotalers in the house who'd prefer that their soup not be spiked, you should make them a cold soup too so they won't feel left out.

How about clams and avocado in ice-cold canned cream of chicken soup? (Maybe your teetotalers will change their minds.)

If all the alcohol and/or the clammy cream of chicken are making you a bit queasy, the book also offers a stomach-settling sandwich option.

Once the candied ginger in these ribbon sandwiches sets things right again, maybe you'll have room for just a little more alcohol in gelatin form...

Eating jellied alcohol over lettuce and mayo proves that it's not just a gussied-up Jell-O shot, right? It's a genuine salad. (At least it makes you work hard to maintain the illusion that this is not an excuse to get smashed at lunch. I don't think anyone was begging for a rosé-and-mayo pairing.)

Here's hoping we can get through today by whatever means necessary....