19 July, 2011

Tuesday Cucumber & Key Lime Margarita

This will make you want to dance! I wasn't sure how cucumber margaritas would taste so, I made a very small batch. And I regret it as I gaze at the empty blender in the sink. The skins could have been bitter (they weren't) the flesh could have been full of seeds (it wasn't) and it might have just tasted too healthy or too green or too something. In any case, I just didn't want to make a full batch and then end up pouring it all down the garbage disposal. Tonight was a time when I was so happy that I  was so wrong. Something about the newborn size of the cukes and their freshly picked status gave them an intense, cooling sensation, which would have been wonderful anytime. But today, with the heat index at 115, it was like the most incredibly insightful gift our beloved Mother Earth could bestow on her children. The tartness of the key lime, the fragrant jasmine flowers mixed with green tea and a sweet touch of raw honey were the perfect companions for those newly picked cukes. Some fresh mint, leftover from Mondays' creation, were next to the cukes in the refrigerator. I tossed that in at the end, right before I added the heavy whipping cream to adjust the glycemic index. Garnished with a slice of cucumber and flowering oregano, this is the perfect foil for a day like today. And if it weren't so blooming hot I would never have tried to concoct something with cooling properties like this treat. As I sipped the liquid cucumbers through the sea salt on the rim I was reminded of the cold soups of summer I have eaten over the past 50+ years. Which led me back to the cucumber fields of you youth. My father insisted we plant acres of the darling and sell them to Gedney to make a fortune. My siblings and I were not nearly as compliant, or as enthusiastic, as he had hoped. 95% of his babies grew as big, and as orange, as small pumpkins before we managed to harvest them. By that point we couldn't even give them to Gedney and they ended up in the pig trough.  We loaded a few bushel baskets, mostly full,  in the dusty  Ford family station wagon and drove them to Winthrop. Arriving at the drop off site for Gedney we emptied the baskets into the sorting machine and the attendant turned it on. As the bed of slats rocked back and forth the smaller cukes fell through the openings onto the conveyor belt. But the larger, orange ones stayed right were they fell until they were swept off and fell into the large barrel with the other rejects, on their way to the pigs. We were only paid for the smaller cukes and it was just about enough to cover us at the Dairy Queen if we got the cheapest things on the menu: dilly bars or single dipped cones. Luckily, I had money from my babysitting business and we also stopped at the Lyle's Cafe for pie. We sat at the counter so we could see the pie lady, Mina Peterson. I loved watching her roll out the crust, studying her technique and imagining how wonderful it would be to spend all day making pies. No one was in a hurry to get back to the hot and humid cucumber patch. As far as we workers were concerned the grasshoppers, crickets and spiders were welcome to claim the produce, we had better things to do: swimming, reading, drinking cherry cokes. On the drive home with tummies full of blueberry pie, cherry pie and Dairy Queen treats, we joked about our Dad's "get rich quick" scheme and plotted how to avoid his pickle patch picking plans. By the end of our "pickle summer" of 1970 he realized his expensive mistake. He told us that we were ungrateful, and spoiled rotten, just like the soft orange cucumbers left on the ground. He said he bought the tractor and planted those seeds for us, so his kids could make some money, be independent and have something to do over our summer vacation. And then, after telling us we didn't deserve the opportunity he had provided, he solemnly vowed it would be a long, long time, if ever, that he would try to do something like that for us kids again. And, so far, thank you, Jesus, he's kept his word.

1 comment:

Denise Emanuel Clemen said...

What a story! Getting rich on cucumbers. My parents talked about chinchillas....