We hope you will join us
this coming Thursday at Pathfinder Produce for the freshest tastes
around. Our weekly market is just brimming with fresh produce, and we
offer many bulk items and baked goods too. Stop by the Village Commons
from 2 to 5 p.m. … you’ll be glad you did!
**********
At Graceland we’ve been enjoying the kale and lettuce from
the garden, which are still going remarkably well. I noticed that despite
the presence of weeds, bugs, and juvenile delinquent bunnies, my green beans
are starting to produce, and many yellow blossoms are flowering on my
cucumbers.
Freshly sliced cukes are a great taste of summer, and there
are many recipes calling for them in salads, sandwiches, in drinks, and even as
desserts. A lot of options – some of which are surprising -- are
available at the Huffington
Post and the Martha
Stewart websites.
Cucumbers, cucumis sativus, are 90% water, and are
high in Vitamin K and lignans, compounds that are thought to reduce the risk of
cardiovascular disease, as well as breast, uterine, ovarian and prostate
cancers. According to some studies in an article in Life
Extension Magazine, lignans, which are phytoestrogens, may also have a role
in reducing chronic inflammation, staving off viruses, and improving the
insulin response in the body.
Cukes are thought to have originated in India, and they have
been cultivated for over three millennia. According to the Roman
historian Pliny, Emperor Tiberius, who reigned from 14 to 37 AD and was a
gloomy sort, loved cucumbers. "Indeed,” Pliny wrote, “he was never
without it; for he had raised beds made in frames upon wheels, by means of
which the cucumbers were moved and exposed to the full heat of the sun; while,
in winter, they were withdrawn, and placed under the protection of
frames…."
Cucumbers then traveled to France, Spain and England, and
made it to New England by the mid-16th century. Concurrently,
the Plains Indians learned how to grow them from Spanish settlers in Mexico and
California and they traveled eastward as well. Cucumbers were grown by
the Haudenosaunee here in New York when the first Europeans came
through the region in the late 1600s.
For a while, Europeans in the later 17th century, held that eating
uncooked vegetables was dangerous; cucumbers may have gotten the moniker “cowcumber”
at this time as they were viewed only as fit to be used as fodder. By the
mid-1800s, cukes were back in favor, and pickling, which had become a favorite
way of preserving them, was revolutionized with the advent of the Mason jar for
home canning in the 1860s. A fun history of pickling timeline is offered
by the New York Food
Museum.
So until next time, enjoy your garden, try some fresh cukes
in new recipes, and be well!
Lori
