My Favorite Summer Recipes by Jana Richards

My favorite summer recipes are often ones that use produce from our garden. It’s great to have recipes on hand for when a vegetable goes crazy and proves way more bountiful than you expected. Like last year when my husband decided to start tomatoes from seed and we ended up with more tomatoes then we knew what to do with. We ate a lot, froze a lot, gave quite a few away, and I put many tomatoes through my juicer. It was delicious but I don’t think I’ve ever drunk so much tomato juice in my life! If you have a juicer, it’s a great way to use up excess tomatoes and it tastes delicious. Sometimes I processed the tomatoes on their own and drank the juice that way, but I very much enjoyed adding a peeled lemon and juicing it along with the tomatoes.  

It'll be a while till these tomato plants bear fruit.

If I was feeling fancy, I added other vegetables to my drink. Here’s a recipe for Spicy Tomato, from The Juice Lady’s Turbo Diet by Cherie Calbom:

Spicy Tomato

2 medium tomatoes

2 dark green lettuce leaves

2 radishes

Handful of parsley

1 lime or lemon, peeled

Dash of hot sauce

Cut produce to fit your juicer’s feed tube. Juice ingredients and stir. Pour into a glass and drink as soon as possible. Serves 1.

It was a very late spring, so this English cucumber is very small. 

One year, the vegetable that grew out of control in the garden was our long English cucumbers. One of my favorite recipes using cucumber is Creamy Cucumber and Dill Salad. It’s cool and refreshing on a hot summer day, and so easy to prepare. My mom had a similar cucumber salad recipe, but she always used sour cream, which is higher in fat, and white vinegar. I find the rice wine vinegar much milder. Here’s the recipe:

Creamy Cucumber and Dill Salad

4 cups thinly sliced seedless cucumber

1 tsp. salt

1/3 cup low fat yogurt (you can also use sour cream if you prefer)

2 T. rice wine vinegar

2 T minced fresh dill

Pinch of freshly ground black pepper

1 cup thinly sliced red onions

To Prepare:

Toss the cucumber and ½ tsp. salt in a colander set over a large bowl. Let stand for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Rinse and dry the cucumber slices. Discard the liquid.

Add the cucumber and onions and toss to coat.

Cover the bowl and chill the salad, 1 hour. Serves 4.

It won't be too long till I can make a rhubarb pie!

One of my very favorite things to make using produce from my garden is Rhubarb Pie. Each year I wait in anticipation for my rhubarb to get large enough so I can make it. I got the recipe years ago from my mom, but I have no idea where she got it. The rhubarb is suspended in a custard-type filling that’s just delicious, but it’s definitely not low-cal. I’ve made this pie many times, and even rhubarb haters have told me they like it!

Rhubarb Pie Filling

2 ½ cups chopped rhubarb

1 cup raisins (optional)

1/3 cup flour

1 cup sugar

¼ tsp. salt

½ cup sweet heavy cream or whipping cream

1 egg

Mix ingredients together and pour into pie shell. Makes one pie. 

Summer is a great time to have recipes on hand that use fresh vegetables (or fruits) from the garden. Enjoy the bounty of summer!