Last Friday, otherwise known as the day the sun bludgeoned us all to a weak, cranky pulp, I decided to take the City’s advice and check out those places that TV people yammer on about when temps reach the 4 jillion-degree mark: a cooling center.

I wasn’t sure what I’d find. Would we all be sequestered in an air-conditioned room to play board games? (If so, would there be Boggle?) Would it be like the cafeteria in middle school where I’d have to immediately figure out which clique to sit with, so I wouldn't get stuck hanging with the duds all day? Would there be footbaths and kiddie [...]

When was the last time you had an ice pop? Was it one of those tongue-scraping plastic tube things that they give you at Field Day? Please don’t tell me you prefer Sno Cones. Those are awful, and nobody admits it because they’re afraid of messing with nostalgia.

Anyway, why eat crushed ice with cough syrup on top when you can make yourself a perfectly lovely frozen treat at home with not much effort? Specifically, these lush, peachy, honeyed ice pops, from a recipe kindly provided by Nathalie Jordi of People’s Pops. And one standout benefit of making ice pops at home: You can spike 'em with booze [...]

Gazpacho is delicious, but sometimes it just involves too many greens, and not enough bread. Luckily, the Spanish already invented a carb-and-oil based version: salmorejo (sal-mo-RAY-ho), an invention from Cordoba, Andalusia. Using day-old bread and hard-boiled eggs, it’s designed to tie up loose ends at the end of the week, when the groceries are running out and no one feels like cooking anything. The best part: it only requires preparation and a refrigerator, no heat. Perfect for a midsummer meal.

Cold cucumbers with scallion sauce from Grand Sichuan

Scottish cheddar & Branston Pickle sandwich from Tea and Sympathy

Cold cereal with milk from Carnegie Deli

Yes, it's hot outside. It's summer, so hopefully no one is shocked by that. But it's still awful, a travail that everyone expects but nobody likes. But do you know what's cold? Or, what will be cold in a short minute? Your blood will be cold, because we have gathered legitimately scary ghost stories guaranteed actually to have happened! And they're scary!

They’re not as good as central air, or winter, but it is you, the reader, that we love, and one small way we can show our appreciation is to scare you with real-life stories of the unexplained to the extent that you forget about your earthly-plane problems, like [...]