Thursday, October 20, 2011

Cukes of Hazard

"Despite the gardener's best intentions, Nature will improvise." ~Michael P. Garafalo

I have some serious cucumber envy. My wife gets excited every time she plucks another one out of our garden. I have to admit, I'm a little jealous. They're big. Really big. And believe me when I tell you we have grown no fewer than fifty cucumbers this year. Five-zero.

All huge.

None bigger than this one, the mother of all cukes:
A lot of guys would feel inadequate.
Besides my feelings of inadequacy, I have another problem: what the hell do I do with all of these cucumbers? There are not a lot of recipes for them. You put them in salads, you make dips. I even sliced some nice and thin and put them on yummy sammiches one weekend.

All told, that accounted for maybe four or five cucumbers.

So now my cucumber envy has turned into cucumber fatigue. Problem is, you can't cook them. We've even given about two dozen away to friends and co-workers. That's when I emailed my friend Evin over at Food Good, Laundry Bad and told her I needed help.

She sent me two recipes.

I was psyched. Not only will I use these recipes, I'll write up a cool post about it for Evin's blog. I'll tell her readers how easy it was, how much my family enjoyed them, how there were no leftovers.

Well, there were no leftovers. But not for the reason you might think. A funny thing happened on the way to getting rid of the rest of the summer's harvest of cukes. They went bad in the fridge because I was saving them for this post.

Oh well. I didn't even fell bad about it.

Next year, we plant fewer cucumbers and more green beans.

Thanks again to Evin for her help. This post was originally published on Food Good, Laundry Bad last month. (You can follow that link for the recipes.) Please check out her blog and follow her on Facebook and Twitter. She's one of my favorites.

6 comments:

  1. This is why I think that any man who has cucumbers growing at his home should buy a Hummer just in case there's a need for emergency inadequacy compensation. It's just the smart thing to do.

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  2. Like I said, this is why we will plant more green beans next year.

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  3. Don't the really thick ones have a lot of seeds? Don't judge a cuke by its size! Other things, yes. Cukes, no.

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  4. Pickles!! Freezer pickles are super easy, and they last forever.:)

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  5. Juice them ...cucumber juice + celery juice is awesome ;)You may take that with a grain of salt since I am the only one in my home who enjoys cuke juice. Husband and kids won't go near it. Just another idea for using cucumbers.

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  6. My favorite thing to do with cukes is peel and slice them, slice and onion in rings, then cut those in half and put both into a soak of equal parts sugar and white vinegar. Let them sit for at least 12 hours in the fridge. They are great to eat alone, but my favorite is with white rice and a nice, firm piece of grilled fish. Delish!

    ReplyDelete

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