Summer Food Preparation With Coolers

Summer time is the best time to explore the outdoors. What better time than summer to enjoy the beautiful flowers, the green grass, the blue skies and well, all the other splendid and wonderful creations of Mother Nature. Of course, with all the activity your doing like swimming and running around, playing ball, hiking and even fishing, you are bound to be hungry and I don’t know about you, but to me, food seems to have a different taste when eaten outdoors- it’s more delicious.

That’s the reason why most people love outdoor cookouts and barbecues. The flavor of the outdoors is in the food and it whets your appetite and hunger. One of the first things that you need when cooking outdoors is a printed cooler to keep meat, fruits, drinks, vegetables and whatever else you are planning to cook, fresh, from the simplest of things like a sandwich to bigger items such as chicken. Printed coolers are customized coolers that have your own message or design on them.
    The most troublesome things associated to keeping food in printed coolers or custom coolers or any other type of cooler is the cold food. For cold food, it’s hard to keep them cold but there are several ways with which you can use. If you want to keep foods cold, you're going to need to start by getting the cooler cold first and keeping it cold. The best and cheapest way of doing this is with ice. Block ice is much better because it stays much colder for long compared to ice cubes that melt easily.
    But if you do not have block ice, you can try filling plastic bottles with water and freeze them to form blocks of ice. This method is a better way compared to using ice cubes of ice blocks. When the ice melts, the water remains inside the bottle instead of melting all over the inside of your cooler. Another way you can make your printed cooler cold is by using frozen gel-packs. These gel packs are a more reusable alternative, but unlike ice cubes and the frozen bottle method, these are a more expensive method.
Another way to keep your printed cooler chilled is to keep it in your refrigerator until the very last minute before you leave home. When you're ready to hit the road, pack your food right from the refrigerator and into the cooler. Of course when it comes to packing, just don’t dump everything in. When placing food inside a printed cooler, you need to practice LIFO. LIFO stands for ‘last in, first out’.

This means that the foods that go in first are the ones that you plan to eat or use last. This way, it saves you the hassle from taking out all the items from the printed cooler just to get what you want and you do not have to go digging through the cooler for the food items that you want first. Your first choice of foods have to be on top so that as the day progresses, you gradually make your way from top to bottom. One last essential tip in keeping your cooler cold is but keeping the cooler closed. Also, keep the cooler in a shady place, away from the direct heat of the sunlight.

Kim is the author of Discountmugs.com.