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Since we're currently luxuriating in an abundance of lovely, crisp, crunchy, fresh cucs, I went looking for a new recipe in which to use them with dinner last night. And I found a real winner.
Have you ever come across that one special cook book in which you find a kajillion recipes that are so, so good? Well, this one is like that for me. Seems that reaching for this blue and white check book can't help but yield another great tasting recipe. It's put out by Taste of Home books and I took the following recipe for Sesame Cucumber Salad directly from it. Didn't make many any changes at all except that I didn't have green onions so substituted red onion rings instead.
SESAME CUCUMBER SALAD
8 cups thinly sliced cucumbers
1 tablespoon salt
2 green onions, sliced
1 garlic clove, minced
2 to 3 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons vinegar
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 tablespoon sesame seeds, toasted
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
Place cucumbers in a colander. Set the colander on a plate; sprinkle cucumbers with salt and toss. Let stand for 30 minutes. Rinse and drain well. In a bowl, combine the onions, garlic, soy sauce, vinegar, oil, sesame seeds and cayenne. Add cucumbers and toss to coat. Cover and refrigerate until serving. Yield: 8-10 servings.
I did toss and stir the cuc slices in the marinade a couple/few times in the four hours I had it in the refrigerator before dinner.
What to do with more cucs today? Today's going to be an easy day on the cook. Leftovers from last night and lots of fresh veggies from the garden (including cucs, of course) with a good dip.
Happy Sunday to you all!
Okay, it was dark but not really stormy . . . unless 40 mph winds qualify as a storm. Well, yeah, I guess it WAS a windstorm!
At any rate, we were kept awake tossing and turning for most of last night. Hubby finally gave it up and got out of bed at 4 a.m. I think knowing he was up and "on watch" enabled me to fall into a deep slumber from which I didn't awaken until almost 7.
Although we had no real damage from the wind, my poor row of cosmos in the field garden did not fare well. I even had some of them that looked a little vulnerable staked but most of the row is laid low and broken today. No great loss, I suppose, since they weren't blooming very well anyway.
I was most worried about the sunflowers that are getting close to ten feet tall . . . without showing any sign of blossoming yet, I have to add. None of them got blown over, but you can tell from which direction the wind was blowing by looking at them now!
We have definitely had a shift away from summer weather and are experiencing a fall-like feeling in the air. A few weeks ago, I thought I'd never utter the words, "It's a little chilly in here this morning, isn't it?" but that's how I felt when I finally got out of bed this morning. Although it's hard to define, there is just that "feel" to the air that says autumn is rushing in and pushing summer out.
Our temperatures for this week are forecast to only get to the high 60s or low 70s during the day with night temps dipping down to the low 50s and high 40s. Such perfect weather for being outside doing what needs to be done OR doing something (wild and crazy) like actually taking off on a hike or canoe paddle.
I do love fall. It energizes me in the same way spring affects most people. I'm more than ready to have the cooler temperatures. Even if they did come in on 40 mph winds.
We knew there was one of our little red pine squirrels who had gotten into our feed room. Papa Pea set a live trap in there, but we've had no luck catching him.
This is what hubby just discovered. That dang little rodent chewed this hole in the solid wood frame of the window to make his escape. (I hope he got splinters in his gums.)
That may be a bit of a challenge to patch.
I think open season on squirrels has just begun on this little homestead.
I know everyone can grow zucchini so it's nothing to brag about, but I think my two plants (in the same hill) are especially pretty this year. Maybe it's all the blossoms still putting on a show that impress me.
We've been eating them sliced and sauteed with onions and mushrooms with an egg on top for breakfast most every morning for a while now. Yum!
Here's my bed of slicing cucs. I thinned the bed down to four plants. Then two up and died on me before bearing fruit. They just withered and started to turn brown. I inspected them for insect damage but couldn't find any. The two remaining plants are producing about 55 pounds of slicing cucs a day. (Okay, maybe a little less than that.) I took ten cucs to a get together yesterday and wouldn't let anyone leave without taking at least one. They are soooo good and we eat a lot of them either cut into spears with a little salt or sliced and mixed with red onion, garlic salt, black pepper, dill weed and a smidge of mayo. We always miss them when the frost zaps the vines.
I planted three kinds of peppers in this bed and there was a time earlier this season when I didn't think any of them would get over 6" tall. But they did.
This is a sweet pepper, Antohi Romanian, an Eastern European frying pepper. They've always done really well for me yielding heavily. They are yellow turning both orange and bright red, but you can harvest them in the early yellow stage. You can't see them all but this plant has ten peppers on it.
We've never been much for hot, spicy foods but I know they are reputed to be good for us so for the first time this year, I've grown Cheyenne, a "warm" hot pepper which can be used when green, as they are now, or when they turn red. I've yet to harvest one to give it a try. (Wimpy, wimpy, wimpy. No kidding, I'm really afraid of them. I mean I'm supposed to wear protective goggles and gloves when I prepare them??)
I have serious doubt that these jack o' lantern pumpkins will make it this year. This is our largest one, about the size of a soccer ball. (Oh well, there's always orange spray paint.)
Unless we have an early killing frost, I think my Red Kuri squash will mature. This one shown here grows visibly bigger each day. Really.
How many green and yellow beans can two people eat? Like the peppers, my bean plants started so slowly this year, but have ended up giving us a bumper crop. I don't think I've ever had such a good crop of beans.
The green and red cabbage are huge, but a bit beat up by munching insects. They've been hard hit by critter damage this year and I've yet to harvest one to see if they are usable. I really must do that soon.
That's an overview of most of what's happening in the garden right now. Fall plantings are growing under shade cloth and I'm hoping they will give us fresh green goodness well into fall. I'll take the shade cloth off at some point and put cold frames on top of them to extend the season as much as I can.
Gardening a hard work, but I do so love doing it. This time of year I feel like a squirrel (or perhaps a big, ol' bear getting ready for hibernation) taking in the bountiful harvest and packing it away for the winter. What a great pay-off for your own labor!
Considering the crazy weather we've had this summer and the onslaught of insects, my garden has turned out better than I ever thought it would. We've recently had decent amounts of rain, too, which I'm sure has helped immeasurably.
Here's an aerial view of the raised beds taken from my perch in hubby's office. (Or hanging out of one of his windows actually. He kept asking me to please not fall out. Whadda guy!)
Some beds have been cleaned out already . . . hence the sparse look. The three beds that look like they have black covers on them are planted out with cool weather fall crops like broccoli, spinach, Swiss chard, kohlrabi, kale and lettuce and have shade cloth covers on them.
This is some lettuce I planted several weeks ago. The only reason it looks this good or could survive in the heat we've had is because of the shade cover. That stuff really works.
Do you see the bed of Jerusalem artichokes way down at the end of the third row of raised beds? They have to be nine feet tall. Still no sign of flowering out though.
A very sad looking potato patch. It got hit with blight pretty hard. Especially the two rows in the center.
This part of the field garden shows the strawberry patch in the foreground. Just yesterday we cut down all the strawberry plants so they'll have a chance to make strong, healthy, new growth before frost. Beyond that patch is my little pumpkin pie pumpkins. Then sunflowers past that. On the other side of the sunflowers (which you can't see) are jack o' lantern pumpkins.
Here we've got corn in the right corner with Red Kuri squash in front of that and then a line of cosmos. None of my flowers have done well this year. The foliage part of the cosmos grew weird, there were very few flowers and the flowers that bloomed were malformed. Very strange.
Ha! I was so eager for these nasturtiums. They were supposed to be a mix of ivory and maroon blooms. Do you see any maroon blooms? Me neither.
I think I've got a good crop of yellow storage onions coming along. The red onions look pretty good, too.
This is the same variety of cherry tomato I've planted for several years. But, golly-wumpus, this year they are gargantuan in size! About three or four times the size they usually are. What gives with that?
They are just now starting to ripen. We had our first one this weekend. It had absolutely no taste. Nope. None. Zip. Zilch. No taste. Ain't that a boot in the butt?
Okay, this is getting too long. I'll post more garden pictures tomorrow. Promise.
Have you ever come across that one special cook book in which you find a kajillion recipes that are so, so good? Well, this one is like that for me. Seems that reaching for this blue and white check book can't help but yield another great tasting recipe. It's put out by Taste of Home books and I took the following recipe for Sesame Cucumber Salad directly from it. Didn't make many any changes at all except that I didn't have green onions so substituted red onion rings instead.
