Introduction, and Cucumbers in Sour Cream

 

Hello, and Welcome to the Grow City Food and Cooking from the Garden blog!


Example of a very green lunch with lots of garden ingredients


A little introduction:


The Grow City Teaching Garden is in the city of Vincennes, Indiana. It is located in the back yard of the McGrady-Brockman Building, which houses the public library's historical collection at the corner of 7th and Hart Streets.


The garden was started in 2018 as a way to teach people how to garden or how to improve or change the garden they have, especially in urban situations. We offer workshops, workdays, tours and events. We have been gradually adding beds or extending existing beds, and we experiment with various methods. Our primary focus is soil health, teaching the importance of this as the foundation of healthy plants and healthy people.


The Grow City Teaching Garden is a partnership between the Knox County Soil and Water Conservation District, the Knox County Public Library, Vincennes University, and Purdue Extension Knox County. Various people from these and other organizations, and other experienced gardeners, lend their expertise to the program.


The Grow City Teaching Garden in late summer 2022


And now, on to … Food …


Another aspect we like to teach is how to use all this wonderful stuff that you grow in your garden. This blog is created as a way to share some instructions, making them easily accessible.


My husband in our kitchen, chopping up colorful peppers from his garden for our supper


The garden produced cucumbers abundantly in the summer of 2022, so there will be more than one cucumber recipe.


The first recipe/instructions for the Grow City Food and Cooking from the Garden blog is (drum roll) …


Cucumbers in Sour Cream


We are going to start from the garden:


Abundant cucumber vines in the Grow City Teaching Garden, late summer 2022

We grew Arkansas Littleleaf Cucumbers in the Grow City Garden. They are hardy, very productive, multi-purpose, and also just excellent. Another reason to grow them is the little leaves, smaller than most cucumber varieties. This makes it easier to spot the cucumbers.


Cucumber harvest from the Grow City Teaching Garden

The recipe also calls for chopped chives or chopped dill. We only have garlic chives in the garden, rather than common chives, and the flavor is stronger, so – go with dill, in this case, which we have in the garden. We had both mature dill that had gone to seed, some green heads with immature seeds, and some flowering heads. But what we needed were the fresh dill leaves, which are fine and feathery, and we had those, too, down on the stems.


Cucumbers and dill (mature) from the Grow City Teaching Garden


Fresh dill leaves from the Grow City Teaching Garden, ready to chop

Here is the book I used, a gem I found at a library book sale years ago. I challenge you to find a copy somewhere – it's pretty obscure, and there's almost no information in the book of who did it, so I was very lucky. Also, I'm mostly Polish, and this is my favorite in my Polish cookbook collection. Each page has the recipes in both English and Polish, so if you'd like to learn or practice the language, this is one way to do that.




~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


And here's the recipe in full, just as it's written:


Cucumbers in Sour Cream


2 large cucumbers

boiling water to cover

½ cup sour cream

1 tsp. Chopped chives, optional, but very good, or

1 tsp. Chopped dill, also optional

1 tsp. Salt

2 tsp. Sugar

dash of pepper

lemon juice or vinegar


Peel and slice cucumbers very thin. Cover with boiling water and let stand 20 minutes. Drain and plunge cucumbers in cold water. Let stand a minute, then drain again and set in refrigerator for half an hour. Mix sour cream with sugar, pepper, and either of the optional ingredients. Salt cucumbers well and combine with sour cream mixture. Correct tartness with lemon juice or vinegar. Serve cold. Cucumbers prepared this way are easily digested.



OK, here we go!!!


(There will not normally be so long of an introduction, but we will always start with the garden)



Recipe at hand, ready to slice the cucumbers. It calls for 2 large cucumbers. I used one large one and a few small ones that would equal another, because that's what I had.



Peeling and slicing the cucumbers. After cutting off the ends, I decided to leave stripes of peel on them for the color (cucumber rinds tend to be bitter, so you probably don't want to leave them completely unpeeled). Remember to slice them thinly.



Cucumber slices with boiling water poured over them (see how much prettier they are with some green left on?) If you use a bowl like this, be sure to temper it instead of pouring the boiling water in all at once, so you don't break the bowl.

I covered the bowl with a towel and let it sit for 20 minutes, then drained the cucumber slices and plunged them into cold water, let them stand, then drained them again. Then, as per instructions, I let them sit in the refrigerator for about half an hour.



Now it's time to mix up the rest of the ingredients: sour cream, salt, sugar, and the chopped dill leaves. Now you can taste it and add lemon juice or vinegar to taste (I used vinegar). I held off on adding pepper until the end.




Then start adding the sour cream mixture to the drained, cool cucumbers and stir it all together.


And you are all done!! I added the dash of pepper on the top at the end, via a pepper grinder.



It's all so easy! And so very good! A good cool side dish to a meal (especially a Polish one) or to take to a pitch-in dinner. Keep it cool, of course.


Enjoy!


And grow some cucumbers, dill and chives in your garden. :)


Terri Talarek King


(Hop over to the Grow City Garden Blog for straight gardening instructions)









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