After all those months of planting, watering, fertilizing, weeding and similar garden tasks, harvest time has finally arrived. We have been harvesting zucchini for a while and did have some green beans, too, but now we have lots of zucchini plus two kinds of cucumbers, butternut squash, more beans, and....the first tomato.
One kind of cucumber I planted is new to me...long cucumbers. They look just like those expensive hothouse cucumbers that have few if any seeds. Given how much they charge at the market for them I figured that they were hard to grow or only would produce a few. Wrong.
They are growing even better than the regular cucumbers and each vine is happily producing more than half dozen of them. With so many gorgeous cucumbers to have fun with I decided to make a couple of recipes.
For dinner tonight I made a salad which included chunks of both long and regular cucumbers, a couple of tomatoes cut in chunks, half a sweet white onion, diced small, a ripe avocado, peeled, seeded and diced small, and a nice balsamic/ red wine vinaigrette with oregano and herbes de provence.
After the salad marinated for an hour, I topped it with about 1/2 cup feta cheese crumbles for the perfect chilled salad to go with barbecued chicken and fresh corn on the cob.
Summer bounty is so appreciated.
They are growing even better than the regular cucumbers and each vine is happily producing more than half dozen of them. With so many gorgeous cucumbers to have fun with I decided to make a couple of recipes.
For lunch yesterday I had a very proper cup of tea and cucumber sandwich. I had some homemade sourdough bread which I sliced fairly thinly. I removed the crusts, spread the slices with butter, thinly, and then layered on thinly sliced long cucumbers. They went really well with the Earl Gray tea and I really enjoyed the crunchy mild cucumbers which contrasted nicely with the bread and butter.
For dinner tonight I made a salad which included chunks of both long and regular cucumbers, a couple of tomatoes cut in chunks, half a sweet white onion, diced small, a ripe avocado, peeled, seeded and diced small, and a nice balsamic/ red wine vinaigrette with oregano and herbes de provence.
After the salad marinated for an hour, I topped it with about 1/2 cup feta cheese crumbles for the perfect chilled salad to go with barbecued chicken and fresh corn on the cob.
Summer bounty is so appreciated.
Those cukes are the best. They're like English cucumbers, only with even fewer seeds - they're tricky to find here, but occasionally we do.
ReplyDeleteWe're looking forward to moving toward the central part of the country, which includes farms - more produce all 'round (and honey, and berries and cheeses and pheasants, calves and lambs, which we'll be leaving alone).
Love cukes, husband hates 'em. I find it hard to get through a whole one before it goes bad...but a cucumber salad with feta sounds amazing! Who needs the romaine? ;)
ReplyDeleteThe salad sounds great.
ReplyDeleteCute tomato, too.