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When life gives you cucumbers and melons, make melon-coolers
The only things that seem to be doing well in my garden this year, are my herbs and cucumbers. And with the extreme heat we have, I have not been willing to turn on the stove to do can any pickles this year. I have been trying to find creative ways to use all of the cooling cucumbers growing prolifically in my small kitchen garden.
Cucumbers are fast and easy growers, if you do not have a green thumb, try planting cucumbers!
While at the pool one day, I slipped cucumber slices into my sparkling water, it was amazingly refreshing. The smell of the fresh cucumber with the sparkle of the water seemed to cool me down instantly. A few days later I was chopping up a melon and plopped a couple of pieces into my sparkling water and slipped in a cucumber slice. It was amazing, I was so impressed with myself! I then thought,what would a little mint do to this drink? I went out to my container garden and grabbed a few sprigs, and it just put the drink over the top!
It has been hard to find ways to cool down this summer, I have been reading lots of variations of recipes of lemonade and this seemed like a natural application. When you use the bounty of the season, things that are naturally refreshing like melons and cucumbers, you can’t go wrong. Because cucumbers and melons are typically over 90 percent water, they have been used to cool the body and throat for centuries.
The great thing about cooking and creating is that nothing is off-limits, if you put a combination together and it does not work, no worries. Like this recipe, my family really didn’t go for it. Mike, my husband doesn’t like cucumbers at all. Alex and Elliot needed the drink sweetened up a bit, so for them, I added a little honey and lime/lemon juice to make it more like a gourmet lemonaide.
You will be able to find most of the ingredients for the cooler at the market on Saturday. Many of the farmers have cucumbers, some will have melons and you can find honey from Bee Hill honey or Gary at Shadeux breads. I look forward to having you taste the melon cooler and hearing your feedback about it.
Any melon will work in this recipe, just choose the one your family enjoys the most!
People can be funny about melons, they have very distinct opinions about them. My boys LOVE watermelon, but will not eat honeydew or cantalope. The nice thing about this recipe is you can use whatever type of melon your family prefers. Once again, no rules here, just a method. You can adjust the recipe to your liking. If you do not want sparkling water in the recipe that is fine, it will not matter. For me, I love the carbonation, it just makes drinks seem more refreshing to me.
I hope this recipe helps you cool down, and enjoy the rest of summer!
Eat locally,
Barbie Hahn
Sparkling Melon Cooler-Serves 8
Puree 4 cups of melon and press through a fine strainer or cheesecloth, reserve juice.
Slice a peeled cucumber into 16 slices
1/4 cup of mint
Mint sprigs, at least one per glass
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup lemon or lime juice
1-2 liter botttle of club soda, plain sparkling water or plain water.
Fill 8 glasses with ice. Place two cucumber slices, and mint sprig in each glass. Mix honey, lemon or lime juice together, muddle mint in bottom of pitcher. Add melon juice and stir. Add water or sparkling water to pitcher give one final stir, Pour over ice and enjoy.
Nothing tastes better than a farm fresh egg
I guess you could call me an egg snob, yes you could call me that for sure. We had a short stint of raising chickens for eggs in our backyard, until we realized we did not quite meet the township rules regarding backyard chickens. Then we had to give our flock to a local farmer. It was a tough day for us.
Why? Well, believe it or not, chickens have personalities. We had a Paula Dean Chicken, all white ,with big puffy feathers, Big Fatty (you can guess why) and Elliots favorite, Sunny (for Sunny side up) yellow with a furry face and then Road Runner, so fast we could not get her back into the Super Deluxe chicken coop my husband Mike, built. And we had about 30 more chickens in addition to those we became attached to.
We also became attached to the people who came to buy our eggs. They would share the stories of their time going to a family farm or farmers market to buy eggs, or being raised on a farm and going out and gathering the eggs. There is always a story of a mean old rooster in there too!
It was also a hard day because we had become used to eating the most wonderful eggs of our entire lives. A farm egg is just different from store bought eggs, even the really expensive ones in the store do not stack up to those that come from a local farm, where chickens are allowed to roam around the yard and eat bugs, grass and corn. And lets face it, you do NOT get the beautiful assortment of colors of shells you can get from farm chickens.
A rainbow of natural colored egg shells
When I am working at the Anderson Farmers Market, the subject of eggs just seems to come up with the patrons. And I have found egg snobs are everywhere. The first thing everyone wants to comment on is the beautiful bright orange thick yolks and how “eggy” they taste. I know it sounds silly, but farm eggs just have more flavor. That is why I feel lucky to have access to wonderful eggs from several farmers at the Anderson Farmers Market.
What are some other noticable differences between store bought and farm fresh eggs? Farm Fresh eggs shells are thicker, so make sure to give them a good whack on the counter before you try to break them into the pan. It make take you several trys if you are used to the thin shells of a store-bought egg. They are harder to peel when you make hard-boiled eggs. Why, because they are so fresh they have not aged and created the air pocket between the white and the shell that older eggs have. So, if you want to make hard boiled eggs, let your farm fresh eggs “age” for a week or so before boiling them.
- The egg on the left is cooked correctly, the egg on the right has a green ring which means it was cooked to hard and too long
Perfect hard cooked eggs
Place 6 eggs in a saucepan and cover with cold water.
Cover pan with lid, turn heat to medium high and watch until it boils.
When water boils, turn off the heat and let sit for 10 minutes.
To help cool and make peeling easier, pour off hot water and run under cold water or place in ice bath until you can tell the eggs have cooled.
The next time you stop by the Anderson Farmers Market, pick up a dozen of Farm Fresh eggs and have a breakfast you will never forget.
Keep Eating Locally,
Barbie Hahn
