Saturday, September 26, 2009

Cucumber - plentiful harvest and CHEAP

We like cucumbers fresh in salads, with Chinese spices and pepper, preserved in soy sauce, and as bread and butter pickles. The first crop of six disappeared overnight, victims of birds hungry for the first signs of spring. The second planting survived after being protected about a week with upturned milk containers.

These cucumbers are long and slender with spines, similar to the cucumbers we found in Taiwan.

They made great tasting Szchuan cucumber pickles with garlic and hwa-jau.

They were also good preserved in soy sauce and made crispy bread and butter pickles.

After pricing them in the local Farmers' Market at $1.50 each I've decided to continue growing our own; in fact I'm preparing for next year by letting one go to seed. I didn't expect it to get this big though.

1 comment:

Isabelle said...

Just so beautiful!! I'm sure it tastes even better then it looks. This is the first time I've seen a cucumber plant. In Europe and Japan a dish that is very fashionable is " DEEP FRIED CUCUMBER FLOWERS". Would you be interested in trying to make this dish?