— Char Nolan

My local library, uh, has coolers that you can check out what yes, igloo coolers, they, they have that you can check out in their library of things, which is an awesome new, uh, sort of practice that I've seen a couple of libraries, uh, picking up, which is, is really wonderful cuz I have this very expensive, very large cooler that I bought to sort of meet all needs I might possibly have ever time for the future evermore, right? It's an angle cooler, it costs a couple hundred bucks. Is it awesome? Mm-hmm. Yeah, it'll keep ice frozen for three days. It's amazing. It's like a Yeti cooler. It's kind of like an off-brand Yeti. Uh, is it worth the money I paid for it? No, because I will never use it that many times. So to me, what makes an environmentally friendly cooler is, well, something you don't throw away, right? Another thing about keeping things cold is, well, do you actually need to keep them cold? Sure. Uh, plan some dishes that are really great at room temperature. Uh, all of the dishes that I've been talking about here today are gonna be really, actually, in fact, much better at room temperature, if not slightly above it. So think about, uh, when planning a picnic, do I actually need to keep things cold? And can I revise my menu a little bit to best, uh, sort of enable me to, to not have them cold? Another thing you can do is if you do want to keep some things cold, guess what this is. It's a watermelon that I've had in my fridge. Guess how long this is gonna stay cold in your cooler for, for a very long time. For a very long time. Especially if it's, you know, still in its most dense form, meaning uncut. You bring a couple of spoons and well, you know, uh, so long as you, you share space with, with the people around you just, yeah, hey, heat it right out of there. Just scooping melon balls out there you go, right? But here's your cooler that's gonna keep anything cold, even in a double lined, you know, 10 cent plastic shopping bag these days, that's gonna give you, uh, some of that. So layer effect, you know, cold sinks. So if you, if you're not gonna crush all of your food, maybe put this, you know, stuff you really need to keep cold, put it down here. So let the cool air flow down to it. Things that you don't necessarily need to keep cold, just use thermodynamics. I mean, this is, this is, you know, physics here, uh, heat rise, cold sinks, use that to your advantage, et cetera. So I'm trying to think of the most environmentally friendly ways I I can. So a one is borrowing stuff. Yeah, let's not make two of something in the world if we really only need one and we can pass it around the whole neighborhood, right? There you go. Uh, the other is kind of thinking about your meal. Do you need to keep things cold? And then the other thing is well build into your meal. Some things that will keep what needs to be cold. Cold and, uh, yeah. And hey, if you're, if your white wine or your rose is, uh, you're not gonna be cold all the way throughout your picnic, hey, drink up.