One late afternoon last week, my husband called me.

“We’re on our way home. If the kids want to get buckets of water and soak us when we get out of the truck, they can.”

My husband had been working on my parents’ house all week long in the broiling heat, and this particular day, my son had been helping him, too.

Usually my husband gets semi-sick when he works in hot-hot weather, but my parents were up at the property, too, and my mother spent her days pumping everyone full of liquids—mint tea, iced coffee, juice, water—the end result of which was that my husband didn’t spend his evenings suffering from headaches and nausea and being a bear to live with.

My younger daughter was at camp—her first, week-long camp—so she missed the wet homecoming.

I stayed on the porch where it was safe and dry. And hot.

Always, always hot.

The water party didn’t last for very long. My husband said the water felt good at first, but soon the extreme cold on his extremely hot (eh-hem) body turned from refreshing to painful and he had to call it quits.

Water is amazing. Did you know that:

*even when the house is still 91 degrees (in the cooler parts), a ten-minute soak in a tub of nearly totally cold water provides at least 30 minutes of reprieve, maybe even longer if you are willing to sit motionless in front of a fan.

*swiping your skin with a cool, damp washcloth and then lying under a fan actually gives you goose bumps.

*a watermelon, when properly gorged upon, will fill you up to the brim so that no supper is necessary.

Now that the heat wave has finally broken (and I spent the night shivering!), this post feels out of place and kind of useless.

Then again, August is coming.

Do you have any Staying Cool Tips to share?

This same time, years previous: rain (well now, isn’t that appropriate!)

This same time, years previous: the green-eyed monster and me, quotes for writers (and how I do it), baked oatmeal (the kind my family likes), zucchini skillet with tomatoes and feta, zucchini with sausage, tomatoes, and oregano, simple creamy potato salad, French potato salad, tempero, vanilla pudding, apricot pandowdy

World, meet my latest infatuation. I am hopelessly smitten, and you should be, too.

In case the pictures aren’t enough to rope you in, I made a list spelling out all the reasons to love.

1. No kneading.
2. The recipe uses part whole wheat
3. The dough can sit at-the-ready in the fridge for several days.
4. It tastes awesome—chewy and tender.
5. It’s flexible—top it with everything, or nothing
6. It’s bread without turning on the oven!
7. (Which means I can now make bread even if the power goes out!!!)

And that pretty much sums it up.

The other night, I made pesto flatbread by topping the finished breads with pesto (from our first big basil picking!), fresh Parmesan, and some mozzarella and then slipping them back on the hot-but-turned-off grill for a couple minutes.

The cheeses didn’t melt all the way, so next time I might slip the breads onto a piece of foil and then put them in the lidded, turned-on-low grill for a couple minutes.

Grilled Flatbread
Adapted from the July 2012 issue of Bon Appétit

3 cups warm water
2 ½ teaspoons yeast
4 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/4 cups whole wheat flour (I used pastry)
2 tablespoons kosher salt (I used Diamond Crystal)
½ cup sour cream

The dough:
Dissolve the yeast in the warm water. Stir in the flours and let rest for 20 minutes. Add the sour cream and salt and mix vigorously. It will be quite wet.

Let the dough rise at room temp for about an hour before covering well with a plastic shower cap and refrigerating.

Shaping and grilling:
Very important note: when shaping the dough, you need to do two things: flour it to death and move fast.

Fire up the grill—you want it to be about 400 degrees. (I really have no idea on this part. The directions say a “medium-hot fire,” so whatever.)

Snowball a baking tray with flour. Flour your hands. Flour your hands again. Scoop out a handful of the chilled dough, using a scissors or sharp knife to separate it from the rest of the dough. Plop the dough onto the tray, flour the dough well and press it into a flat mass, about 1/4 inch high. Repeat until you have all the flatbreads you need. Put the leftover dough back in the fridge.

Oil the grill.

Quickly, and with lots of extra flour so the dough doesn’t stick, scoop up the flatbreads (one at a time, of course) and lay them on the grill. Close the lid. After several minutes, the breads should be bubbly on top and, on the bottom, brown with flecks of black. Flip, and grill for another minute or two.

Allow the breads to cool for a couple minutes before eating.

Yield: 8-12 flatbreads, depending on the size.

This same time, years previous: red raspberry lemon bars, angst over my daughter’s reading, raspberry lemon buttermilk cake, angel bread