Gardeners' Holidays 2018: Cuke Fest

Once again, I'm opting this year to celebrate the August Gardeners' Holiday as something other than Squashmas. We do have a couple of good-sized zucchini in the fridge at the moment, but they've been more or less swamped by the cucumber and tomato crops. My garden log shows that to date, we have harvested:

• 13 Marketmore cucumbers
• 9 Cross-Country cucumbers
• 8 Black Prince tomatoes (about 10 ounces)
• 104 Honeydrop cherry tomatoes (about 28 ounces)
• 32 small and 16 medium Heinz tomatoes

And this is just the beginning of the tomato season; the Pineapples haven't even started producing yet. By September, we could be literally rolling in the things, if that were our idea of fun. As for the cucumbers, we've got one quart jar crammed full of pickles in the fridge, one more that's half-empty, and four more large cukes just sitting in the produce drawer.

So, rather than try to make a meal out of our two zucchini, Brian decided to put some of our other produce to use in our favorite quinoa salad. This is a just a slightly modified version of the Couscous Salad recipe out of The Clueless Vegetarian, which calls for couscous, cucumbers, and pretty much any other chopped veggies you want to throw in; after trying it at one point with kasha in place for the couscous, we discovered that it works best of all with quinoa, which is much more chewy and substantial. Plus, it has the advantage of being a meal you can feed to just about anyone, since both vegans and gluten-free folks can eat it.

 

Here you see the bowl with just the veggies in it. Every single thing in here—cucumbers, pepper, cherry tomatoes, scallions, and parsley—came out of our garden.

Then Brian added the quinoa and some chick peas for a little extra body, and voilà—a simple, healthy, home-grown meal.

Unfortunately, although we have cherries on hand, we didn't make a dessert with home-grown produce. So we'll have to settle for a little ice cream and an episode of "Good Bones" to close the festivities.