Our featured "In Season" vegetable or should I say fruit is something near and dear to my heart: cucumbers. I LOVE cucumbers! When I was a kid, I liked them peeled with salt. Then I learned that all that salt isn’t good for you (many, many years later). My new cucumber delight is tzatiki sauce on a lamb gyro, yum. I actually go to the salad bar to get extra cucumbers. I am drooling just thinking about it.
Cucumbers come in three varieties: pickling, slicing, and English. The skin is where the vitamins and nutrients live. The skin of the English variety is thinner and the seeds are smaller. This is another vegetable that I would suggest to buy organic. They should be firm to the touch and brightly green. Being mostly water, they also include a good source of Vitamin A, C, K and Potassium.
You can get outside the box and use cucumber to flavor your water. A more familiar way is to add them to your salad. You can go crazy and throw them sliced on the grill; char marks make everything better. You can hull out the middle of the cucumber and stuff it with your favorite dip. I even add them to my cold cut sandwiches. EatingWell.com has a great recipe for a cucumber soup.
In terms of products, the June 2012 issue of Cooking Light has several beauty items that include the "cuke". Essie has a nice looking cucumber green nail polish and I've used the Say Yes to Cucumber facial towelettes which is both a nice makeup remover and skin refresher.
Until we blog again,
Naturally Pebbles
Well, well, well, Naturally Pebbles, great info on the cucumber, one of my favorites also. You need to tell me more about the gyro with cucumbers. Would not mind trying that
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