Thursday, July 24, 2008

What to do with extra cukes

Well after 6 weeks or so of being brain-dead and not being able to think of a thing to write about that would be interesting, I finally thought of something.

I hope everyone's had a nice summer. My poor garden is just NOW producing tomatoes on the plants, but it seems that I'm not the only one around here with tomatoes that haven't bloomed until the last 2 weeks. It was just too cool at night for them.

I have been given a nice selection of cukes. Too many to eat in a couple of days, too few to make it worthwhile making pickles. What to do with them. Cukes don't freeze well at all. Canning them is even worse, unless you make pickles. Here's what I do with them.

I take about 4 cukes, peel and slice very thin - about 1/4" rounds and place them in a bowl.
I peel and thinly slice an onion into rounds. (I prefer my onions then cut in half so I have half-moons - easier to eat that way.) I place these in a bowl too.

I then add 1 part red wine or apple cider vinegar to 1-2 parts water (I like my cukes sour, so I go 1/1) to just barely cover the veggies. Add some salt to taste and mix it all together. Let it sit for a while in the fridge (or not lol). This will last for a week or so in the fridge - if no one eats it all first.

If you wanted you could also add some pickling spices to it and let it sit overnight before eating. Add some sugar and you'd have sweet/sour pickles.

I haven't given exact measurements because you can make this with however many cukes and onions you have. Sometimes, I just add more veggies to it and it's still good.

Because I like the vinegary foods, I take the peeled cukes and a fork and run the tines down the cuke from top to bottom, all the way around it. It causes the cukes to pick up more of the vinegar dressing. After scoring the cukes, I will then slice them thinly.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Missed you!! Thank you for the two posts!!!