Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Cool As A Cucumber

Now that I am finally back up on my feet unaided, I got to one of those items on my list. Partially. Mostly because I was afraid that they were going to rot before I got to them.

Cucumbers!

I decided to try to grow them this year because I knew that they liked hot weather (always a bonus in SE Texas) and mostly because I like pickles. I especially like the Claussen ones that I don't buy because it makes me ill to spend more on a jar of pickles than a pound of meat. For the price of $1 and some space in my garden, I have harvested 3 nice sized cucumbers, with the promise of more. I actually didn't know that cucumbers have little spines on them. Or at least I didn't until I tried to pull it off on a whim and needed to go get an ice pack and a pair of gloves.


Here are the first two off the vine. I've harvested one more since then. You can see the little white spines in the darker green one

Since I have been jonesing for pickles since I saw the first flower, that's what I did with them. Allrecipes.com has fantastic recipes for just about everything. Including those refridgerator pickles. So off I went. Water, vinegar, fresh dill (from the garden of course!), pickling spice (recipe from Allrecipes too), salt, sugar, garlic, and red pepper flakes all went into the bowl. Then in went the cucumbers. They sat for two hours to get happy with each other and then off into the jars and the fridge, where they will sit for 10 days.



I'll let you know how they turn out.

2 comments:

  1. cucumbers and pickles are a hit in this house...2 things belle can eat bc you can leave out the sugar...So awesome you have a place to garden

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  2. I will probably leave it out in the future too. I usually follow recipes closely the first time and then change them as it suits me.

    Can she have squashes? Those are in the same family (curcurbits) as cucumber.

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