Ah you can never have too much relish! And there are so many different recipes for relishes, several including tomatoes. The Tomato-Apple Chutney recipe at NCHFP is good and we make it with 1/2 cukes instead of 1/2 of apples. It is a straight vinegar recipe so you can sub in it.

Plus I think you said you had Joy of Pickling? Lots of good relishes in that book.

Or you can de-seed and shred them for cucumber bread and muffins.

Dave

Thank you, Dave!

I had no idea there was such thing as tomatoes and cukes in chutney, or cucumber bread/muffins.

Ever make zucchini bread? Wonderful stuff to have in the freezer. Same recipe works with cukes. Like carrot cake? Try it with cukes. Like roasted vegetables and/or stuffed zucchini? Both work with cukes.

Dave

Sure, I make zucchini bread, and freeze the shredded for that and patties. No room for freezing actual loaves :). Just never heard of using cucumbers. Might be an interesting flavor...

And I never imagined ROASTED cukes! I will have to try, as I am doing up some eggplants later this eve.

I have been looking for relish recipes, but not really seeing a lot. They seem to be mostly fruits, in JOP.

JOP does have a couple recipes for making pickles from RIPE cukes, though, which I imagine would work. Can I just cut into chunks instead of the specified spears? I imagine shreds might be too dense.

Am I missing something in the relishes department?

Check out the Chow Chow recipe in JOP and the Red & Green Cucumber Pepper Relish too. Both are good.

Wife says she got her recipe for the baked cukes from her Julia Child book years ago. Linked it below. She also has a Roasted Cukes with Onions recipe - olive oil, spears of cukes, sliced onion rings, and various herbs to taste that we both like too.

Do you ever grill zucchini or summer squash on the grill? Cut in hald lengthwise, brush with butter and garlic, S&P? Works with cukes too.

Dave

Here is a link that might be useful: Julia Child Baked Cucumbers

Oh, thank you, Dave!

The Julia link also led me to use for zucchini!

http://www.food.com/recipe/julia-childs-grated-zucchini-sauteed-in-butter-and-shallots-243205

Does this recipe look right for t'other?

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/roasted-cucumbers-and-onions-with-fresh-herbs/

Oh, and here's someone else's version of Julia's cucumbers:

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Creamy-Buttered-Cucumbers/Detail.aspx?prop24=RD_RelatedRecipes

I am so glad to have nonpickling options :). The sun is supposed to be out tomorrow, after rain today, so I don't want to be canning!

I added a cuke to my pans of roasted vegies today.

Interesting! It tastes like cucumber... plus roasting I am not sure what I expected :).

Reminds me of the first time I tried carrot juice. I told my friend, 'It tastes like carrots!' She said, 'What did you expect?' But I didn't KNOW what to expect -- carrots plus juice just did not compute in my brain :).

And some things DO taste totally different cooked -- asian pears, for example.

Anyway, I am now down to try some more cooked cuke recipes :).

Interesting! It tastes like cucumber... plus roasting I am not sure what I expected :).

Yup. :-) But the great thing about them is they so readily absorb the flavors of whatever they are cooked with - garlic, dill, mixed Italian herbs, onions, chopped scallions, etc.

That AllRecipes above maybe the source. Wife is quite the recipe collector from all sorts of sources. But everything she makes is great. ;-)

Dave

What is SWD?

I forget the actual name, but it's a wasp that LOVES ripe fruit and when they get in it, you might as well throw it away. It will lay it's eggs inside the fruit and the larvae eats the fruit from inside out. From what I've heard from the IL fruit grower association, it's a real danger to all organic (non-sprayed) fruit. You don't want to compost infected fruit, because you are actually feeding them what they want. It is a newer pest starting out further south and spreading northward. Chicago might not have them yet, but they are headed that way.

No, SWD are not a wasp, and there is no chemical that helps much against them.

They are spotted wing drosophila, and they infest ripe and ripening fruit still on the tree. They are newly imported to the US from Japan, and don't have natural predators here.

People are ripping out entire orchards because nothing kills them; it's terribly sad.

Researchers are working hard to find solutions. Spottedwing.org is the main center, and extension service site.

Home gardeners may be able to control them pretty well by cleaning up every speck of dropped fruit, netting plants and trees with tulle all season, trapping the flies, harvesting early, carefully timed and alternating sprays, coordinating with neighbors, and so forth. Nothing simple enough for commercial use, yet, though.

I thought we were told they were a wasp variety. They recommended using yellow sticky traps to tell whether you have them or not. Definitely NOT good guys. Unfortunately, not only trees but small fruits also. They've been in Oregon and PNW since 2009 and have now spread quickly to many states.

Check for fruit infestation by using the fruit dunk flotation method. Larvae will float to the top and fruit pulp will sink when you pour sugar-water into a plastic bag partially filled with crushed infested fruit.

Once you get used to them, you can tell infested fruit just by looking at it. Blackberries and raspberries, for example, turn to mush on the vine. Pretty much every ripe berry has maggots in it.

On my asian pear, they seem to only infest if there is already damage from something else. So far they have stayed out of our strawberries, tomatoes, grapes, but they are big problems elsewhere with those crops.

There's a lot of discussion on the GW Fruits & Orchards forum for those who want to join in or read.

Hi. I haven't been on Garden Web in years but have been poking around lately. My suggestion is make gazpacho. I don't know if that can be canned (maybe someone knows?) but you can freeze it for easy meals later.

Thanks, flash, and nice to meet you!