Todays Harvest Basket July 21, 2014
Tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, bell peppers
The green and gold pepper (Low Left) was completely gold the next day.
I have a small garden. It has just a little of a lot of vegetables and flowers. But when zucchini starts producing, it does not seem like a little garden.
I hate those waxy, slick cucumbers in the grocery store. ‘don’t even like to touch them. So now we have lots of cukes in the garden and we eat them fresh at least once a day.
Crisp Cucumbers
The crunch that we all love is easy to get in home canned pickles. Use this tip along with your favorite pickle recipe.
Cut cucumbers from the vine instead of twisting and pulling.
For crisp cucumber pickles, rinse the cucumbers thoroughly and snip off 1/16-inch of the blossom end. The blossom end of the cucumber harbors microbes that can cause softening. Cut at least a 1/16-inch slice off the blossom end of the cucumber. That enzyme in the blossom end can make the pickles unsafe to eat.
The stem ends of the cucumbers above are on the right. The blossom end is on the left for both of these cukes. The blossom end is the opposite from the stem end.
Cucumber season is too short. This time of the year, there is always a bowl of sliced cucumbers in herb vinegar in the fridge.
