Tomatoes, Cucumbers, Zucchini, Oh My! Using and Preserving the Harvest

After weeks of me fussing and fretting over it, the potager (vegetable garden) has finally started to produce.  I can hear the garden gods laughing "you wanted it; here it is".  Now comes the eternal question:  What do I do with all of it?  The freezer is slowly filling up with courgette: (zucchini), freezer bags full of shredded, boxes full of soup; and tomatoes: baggies of sauce and peeled chunks;  and herbs of all sorts.  But cucumbers don't really take to being frozen, and it seems a shame to box up all of those cute little cherry tomatoes. 
I make lots of Tomato Salad with the little yellow and red cherry and grape tomatoes - that I always plant too many of.  With lots of garlic, fresh basil and sea salt, It's great the first day and keeps getting better.   Cucumber salad has always been a summer staple in my family, usually for Sunday dinner along side a pot roast.  But when the cucumber plants are producing in full swing it's not enough.  It's no use trying to be generous with the neighbors in rural France; everyone is walking around with produce in aprons and bags, trying to pawn it off on unsuspecting victims.  Time to hit the family archives for another tried and true summer hit:  Refrigerator Pickles!
These are 'not-quite cucumber salad; not-quite pickles'.  They keep for a month, are great on sandwiches or on their own, and are so easy to make it's almost embarrassing.  Here's the recipe:
Refrigerator Pickles
3 - 4 cucumbers, thinly sliced - but with a knife, about 1/16th" thick (.2cm)
1 green pepper, chopped
1 red onion, chopped
1 1/2 tsp celery salt
1 1/2 tsp regular, sea or pickling salt
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup cider vinegar  

Put cucumbers, peppers and onions in a large bowl.  Sprinkle with salts, mix well and allow to site at room temperature for 1 - 3 hours.  At the same time mix sugar and vinegar and set aside - it takes awhile for the sugar to dissolve into the vinegar, so it's best to do it ahead.  After a couple of hours add the sugar/vinegar to the cucumbers, mix well and refrigerate.  They are ready in a day and keep for a month.
We won't even talk about the zucchini....but if you are looking for more recipes (can one ever have enough?) try my vegetable recipe archives. 
Enjoy the bounty of the season.....it's so fleeting....

Comments

[Riana]

YUm! Pickle chips! That is a great idea. I'm in tomato overload right now, just making sauces as fast as I can for this winter. We also get cantaloup overload, any ideas on what to do with them? We are sick of eating them...

[Tracey in IN]

I've been meaning to comment on the cucumber salad. My grandmother always made something very similar to this. Her family background is that her grandparents were Amish and had come from the Jura region of France in the 1830's, when the second Napolean was conscripting people. Before that they'd been in the Berne area of Switzerland, and several centuries before that in Austria. She says her own granma gave her the recipe, and she'd grown up eating it. So it's old.

Her version is that it's a thinly-sliced onion instead of a shallot; and it's a mix of vinegar and cream for the dressing. But it is very refreshing on a hot day!

We have a thing called a "Bluffton Slaw Cutter" that is kind of like one of the inserts of a mandolin, but you can hold it upright on a plate and the slices just fall out the back. Mine was my great-grandmother's. I am hoping to find two more so my kids can each have one when they grow up. Grandma told me that when she was growing up, they used to make barrels of slaw using it (as well as giant dishes of what they called Googoomer Salat).

Nice to have a good recipe for it! It was a hit with everyone, including the baby.

[Katie]

My mother's maternal grandparents were Swiss. She also makes her cucumber salad with onions, vinegar and cream but I can never get her recipe to taste the same as when she makes it.... And I always have yogurt in the fridge but rarely cream! She likes to eat cucumber salad on top of buttered, boiled potatoes - the origins of sour cream with baked potatoes?