Mother Lode of Cucumber Recipes

I picked 3 more cucumbers this morning, which makes about 15 waiting to be eaten in my crisper drawer. Luckily, I just found this great resource:
http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~bcohen/cucumbers/recipes/
I've never imagined so many things you could do with cucumbers! Everything from cucumber limeade to sandwiches to soups and even hot dinners! The recipes aren't tested or anything (and many not vegan) but there sure are a LOT of them and it has given me some great ideas.

Plus, it says the world's record for largest cucumber is 59 lbs. WHAT?!?! 59 lbs! Wow.

I'm really liking the limeade idea. Not sure what I'm going to make yet though. Will update this post with a pic when I figure it out!

While I'm at it, here's a nice collection of borage recipes too:
http://www.herb.co.za/herbal/borage-recipes.htm

Midsummer Meal

This was last nights dinner. A little random, but it used up everything I picked from the garden. On the left was a quinoa, turnip green, smoked tempeh & almond dish. It was garnished with lightly sauteed red and yellow grape tomatoes on top. (we've gotten about 10 so far - I can't wait till the tomatoes really get going over the next couple weeks!!) The turnips were diced and sauteed in garlic, smoke flavor, onion & red pepper flakes. It was delicious! The almond added just the right amount of crunch. I got the idea here: Novel Eats Simply Vegan blog Thanks Samantha.

In the middle are dill pickles made from 10 pickling cucumbers & a packet of Ball dill mix. Also added some kung pao peppers from the garden and a bit of garlic. I didn't do a water bath with them - just refrigerated in two jars. I don't think we'll have any problem eating them within two weeks. I already ate almost half a jar myself yesterday! Above you see the cucumbers (I didn't use the three on the right - those were left on the vine too long) and below is the final product. I picked 6 more today.

Finally on the right are more mashed turnips and potatoes. I really can't get enough of those. On top is a beautiful edible Amazon Jewel climbing nasturtium - it was really delicious! Floral yet spicy. I'm looking forward to more of these gorgeous blooms. Here's a collage of the various colors. I took all of these pics last night. The hardest part is picking them to eat - I just want to keep looking at them.

Calendula Bed Looking Beautiful

The calendulas really exploded this week. The flowering ones in the front are a mixture of Flashback and Oktoberfest that I planted inside under the growlight setup back in April. Towards the back are some smaller plants that I direct seeded in May. I'm really glad I started the earlier ones inside! You can see it made a huge difference.

The amazing thing is I took this picture on Tuesday, and by Thursday I went outside after work to find twice as many flowers! I love how they are all different shades of cream, yellow and orange. And they will keep flowering into the fall. What a great edible plant. There will be plenty to go around for bath salt presents this holiday season, that's for sure. I'm also hoping with this many plants in one bed, they'll self sow so next year Ill have early volunteers outside.















UPDATE 7/15/09: Darnit! I spoke too soon. Just noticed the calendulas have a terrible black aphid infestation! Going to try shooting them off with the hose. If that doesn't work, next step will be to use a canola oil/liquid soap solution. Would be nice to get some ladybugs, but the only place I know to get them is over the internet and I'm not quite there yet.

UPDATE 7/19/09: Well, the aphids were easy enough to control. Most of them were on spent blooms that needed to be deadheaded anyway, and the rest I just blasted off with the hose. Now there are just a couple more I'm going to blast off. However, I thought the light yellow spots on the leaves were normal, but they appear to be getting worse and may actually be a disease. Either leaf spot or white smut: http://vvv.state.ct.us/caes/PlantPestHandbookFiles/pphC/pphcale.htm. I hope it is the latter b/c that is not as serious as leaf spot, which will kill the plant. Guess we'll see how it goes.

Tip Top Turnips Again

I had a successful turnip crop last year, and sure enough, this week I pulled half the row and they grew beautifully again! Even better that last year - some were huge! I put my hand in the picture so you can see the size:I mashed them with an equal amount of potatoes, a little bit of Earth Balance vegan butter and Silk soy creamer. A good shake of smoked salt & black pepper = heaven! I even had a bowl for breakfast the next day haha. The nice thing about turnips is they are so low in calories (only 36 per cup), so it makes mashed potatoes a lot friendly to my diet, but even better tasting. Now I just need to figure out what to do with the greens, where most of the vitamins are. They're washed and ready to go in the fridge.

Today's Garden Tasks: Updated

Good thing it is a beautiful sunny day here in the 70's, as there is lots to do!

1. Weed & cover paths with straw
2. Weed strawberry bed & mint/fern bed
3. Trim herb bed which looks like a wild and crazy jungle right now
4. Pull old peas & bolted lettuce then replant with new lettuce, beets & carrots
5. Spray with more baking soda/soap mixture to keep away powdery mildew
6. Fertilize with a little more Maxicrop, or maybe Bonnie soybean stuff. I haven't decided yet. Gardenweb told me not to put on anything but I'm going on my own here and going to do at least a little weak solution of one or the other.

I think that's it. Like as if it isn't enough! Hopefully I'll get it all done. Then tomorrow no work - going swimming in the lake!

UPDATE: Ugh. This weekends garden tasks = FAIL. First, my dog JJ got sick, poor fuzzball was pooing green and vomiting so we had to take him to the emergency vet. Turns out he is now fine after taking a little bit of medicine, but, it was scary. On top of that, I appear to have some kind of bad chest cold or possibly bronchitis. Going to the doctor tomorrow. So, with help from my partner all we got done was some weeding and 3/4 of the paths covered with hay. Needless to say, I didn't get to the lake either. Oh well, try again next weekend...

What's Up Doc

I just pulled this row of beautiful carrots on Tuesday. I planted them closer together than recommended on the seed packets, in two rows using a staggered pattern. So I'm really happy they grew this well!

I think if I left them in longer they would have gotten bigger, but they were a little too close to my cucumbers. Happily there is still a whole other row, so this is less than half of what I'll get. Wuhoo! I'm also very pleased b/c last year my carrots barely grew at all. Must be b/c they got more sun this year + a better variety of seed (Napoli hybrid, Eliot Coleman's favorite type).

They are really sweet tasting too. I've just been eating them raw so far, like Bugs Bunny. Tonight I will probably make a shredded carrot salad, with some lemon juice & herbs.

I'm going to plant more for a fall harvest soon.

And now I have to post a gratuitous JJ picture. :-) I went on a camping trip for four days this weekend that didn't allow dogs, so Mom took care of him. Boy did I miss this furry little guy, barking and all! He loves carrots.