Everything I need to know can be found here in my garden.
I hosted a brunch meeting recently, and this was the perfect dish to round out the menu:
Mini Bagels with Smoked Salmon and Cucumber Spread
Deviled Eggs
Tomato Tartlets
Fresh Strawberries
White Wine and Grapefruit Spritzers
The recipe couldn’t be simpler, and was okay to make a day ahead!
Continue reading “Smoked Salmon and Cucumber Spread”
We love growing Persian cucumbers, usually enjoying them as a cold and crunchy snack or sliced in a tabbouleh salad. I came across a recipe for bread and butter pickles that used Persian cucumbers and I thought I would try and make my own. I had a half a dozen jars in no time at all! Continue reading “Bread & Butter Pickle Slices”
There comes a time for me, during every cucumber growing season, where I cannot stand to look at another cucumber slice. I honestly always enjoy the taste of cucumber, but those little white & green circles really annoy me after weeks and weeks of seeing them in everything I eat. Continue reading “Creamy Cucumber Salad Dressing”
I was determined to stick to only a few pickle and relish recipes, because, realistically, how many pickles can two people eat in a year? I had been relying on the cucumbers to provide refrigerator dill spears, and then added one dill pickle relish — to compliment the sweet zucchini relish that is such a favorite, and the sweet refrigerator zucchini pickle slices. But, when I came across this Sweet Heat recipe, I had to give it a try. Both my husband and I love the combination of sweet and spicy and, well, we still had a lot of cucumbers to use up! Continue reading “Sweet Heat Pickle”
I have always laughed at the name of this casserole. ANYone who is served a dish by this name, in the middle of summer, KNOWS it has to have zucchini in it, somewhere. I first received a meatless version of this from my dear, dear friend Bobbie, many years ago. Continue reading “Summer Surprise!”
I know that salsa is a whole lot more than tomatoes. I make a delicious green tomatillo salsa that is a favorite on our house breakfast burritos. But, this recipe really surprised me! It holds up really well in the refrigerator for several days, the cucumbers stay nice and crisp, and the flavor may even improve as the salsa ages.
This is another perfect use for cucumbers that have grown too large to use as slicers. Continue reading “Ooo-lee-la-la Crazy Good Cucumber Salsa”
I recently read a blog in which the author described the cucumbers of her youth, “as thick as baseball bats, their tough skins dappled with small, prickly spikes. Running my fingers along their peel was as pleasurable as stroking barbed wire.”
She, of course was singing the praises of today’s so-called seedless varieties, particularly the popular plastic-wrapped English cucumbers, so packaged to add an additional layer of protection to the thin, delicate skins. They are delicious! But, why do we need to replace a natural layer of protection with an unnatural one, once again?
The cukes in my garden are a “burpless” variety, a long-fruited oriental cucumber that produces impressive yields. The prickly spikes are easily scrubbed off, and the skin is not so tough as to make it hard to digest. Depending on my recipe, though, I may partially peel them (I like the striped effect, which always looks pretty), or peel them completely — which is often much easier to do than removing shrink-wrapped plastic! If I am watchful, and the cucumbers are picked when young, they are delicious in salads. If they grow a little bigger, I can make pickles. And if I blink one too many times, I harvest the “bats” and make pickle relish! Continue reading “Dill Pickle Relish”
I can pickle
He can pickle
She can pickle
We can pickle
They can pickle
You can pickle
Oh, let’s pickle
Can you pickle, baby?
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I spent quite a long afternoon, last week, dealing with a bumper crop of cucumbers. Apparently, the trellis that my husband built, to prolong our lettuce crop, made the cucumbers very happy! The cucumbers climbed it rather fast, providing a nice afternoon shading for the lettuce below.
Continue reading “Quick & Easy Dill Pickles”
