Cucumbers: Fresh From the Garden

My green-thumbed mother recently gave us a load of cucumbers straight out of her garden.  I love love love cucumbers.  I could eat them plain all day, everyday.  This may not be so great for my stomach though, so I needed to think of a way to use them up before they get mushy.  So I went to my go-to site for recipes, Food.com, and searched for cucumber recipes.  What I got was a gaggle of recipes for cucumber salad.  Now, I like some cucumber salads, but not all cucumber salads.  I chose a recipe that I thought I could make using what I have on hand.  I started following the recipe and decided to change it up to fit our tastes.  My hubby is a pretty picky eater so I wanted to make sure he would like the final product.  Here is what I came up with and, if you ask me, it is gooood.

Ingredients:

3 medium sized cucumbers

4 Tablespoons your favorite vinegar (I used white wine)

2 Tablespoons mayo

1 teaspoon sugar

Celery salt to taste

Parsley to taste

Garlic Salt to taste or Regular Salt if you prefer

Pepper to taste

1.  Slice cucumbers very thin.  (I used the mandolin that we got for our wedding.  Easy. Quick. Handy.)

2. In a separate bowl (use one that has a lid), whisk together vinegar, mayo and sugar.

3.  Add seasonings to taste.  This is where you make the recipe your own.  If there is an herb or spice that you love, throw it in.  Just keep tasting until you think it is delicious.  I like celery salt and Hubs lives for garlic salt so I knew I had to add these two. 

4.  Add cucumbers, put on the lid, and shake up.

5.  Refrigerate until cold (at least 2 hours).

6. Enjoy!

Gourmet Gadgets

We had friends over for dinner last week so we could try out some of our new loot from the wedding.  The menu included:

*chips/pretzels with three types of dip (french onion, roasted garlic hummus, and pimento chip dip).

*flying saucers (sloppy joes with cheese made in the triangle sandwich maker)

* frozen peach champagne cocktail

* Nutter Butter Frozen Peanut Butter pie

It was delicious and so I'm going to share some of the recipes with you.

First the pimento chip dip.  It doesn't sound very good, but I love it and so did everyone else.  It is one of the recipes I got from my Aunt Lynn at my first bridal shower.

Ingredients:

8 oz. Cream Cheese

1 jar Pimento Cheese

1 Tbsp. Minced onion

1 Tbsp. Chopped Olives

1 Tsp. Olive Juice

Mix together and enjoy!

Next up we have the Nutter Butter Frozen Peanut Butter Pie.  I found this recipe on Food.com  Here.  It was delicious and cool on such a hot day!

Ingredients:

Crust

• 24 Nutter Butter sandwich cookies
• 5 tablespoons butter, melted

Filling

• 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
• 1 cup creamy peanut butter
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon vanilla
• 1 (8 ounce) container Cool Whip, thawed, divided

1 To make crust*, crush the cookies in a zipper style plastic bag with a rolling pin, or in a food processor.  I used my new food processor and LOVED IT!

2 Mix cookie crumbs with butter.

3 Press into bottom and sides of a 9 inch pie plate.

4 Mix cream cheese, peanut butter, sugar and vanilla with electric mixer on medium speed until well blended.

5 Gently stir in 1 1/2 cups whipped topping.

6 Spoon into crust.

7 Freeze 4 hours or overnight until firm.

8 Let stand 1/2 hour or until pie can be cut.

9 Garnish with remaining whipped topping and additional cookies if desired.

10 Special extra: Just before serving, drizzle chocolate flavored syrup on plates.

11 *If desired, omit Nutter Butter cookie crust and use an oreo crust instead.

Yumm!

I have no pictures of the cocktail, but it was tasty enough that I'll share the recipe anyways.  I also found this recipe on food.com.  It is a Rachel Ray recipe and you can find it here  We decided to make this because we wanted to use our Magic Bullet.  However, after we made our first cocktail (a test run before the guests even arrived) the Magic Bullet wouldn't work anymore.  We were so disappointed!  I don't know if we're going to return it or what.  So we had to finish the cocktails in the blender (boring).  At least they still tasted good.

Ingredients:

1/4 cup sugar, to rim glasses

1 pint peach sorbet

2 (1 1/2 fluid ounce) shots triple sec, Grand Marnier or 2 Cointreau liqueur

750 ml chilledchampagne, 1/3 bottle or 750 ml sparkling wine, to fill blender 1/3 bottle

Blend and drink up!