Cucumber Watermelon Salad and Coolers

WATERMELON AND CUCUMBER SALAD

"Cornbread is sweet,
pork chops are good,
blackeyed peas are mighty, mighty fine
but give me, oh give me
I really wish you would
that watermelon hangin' on the vine..."

-- Tennessee Ernie Ford, "The Watermelon Song"



Ingredients:


- 3 cups peeled and cubed cucumber

- 3 cups cubed seedless watermelon

- 3 tbsp fresh lime juice

- Salt & pepper to taste

- Cayenne pepper to taste (optional)

- Lime zest


1. In a large bowl, toss cucumber and watermelon with lime juice, salt, pepper, and cayenne (if using.) Top with grated lime zest and serve immediately.

2. There is no step two.

If not serving immediately, leave out the salt. Refrigerate salad, covered, up to four hours; just before serving, toss with salt.

If you're feeling boozy, omit the salt and pepper and dump the salad into a food processor or blender. Puree and strain the liquid into an ice-filled glass and top up with vodka, a squeeze of lime, and a drizzle of honey. Boom! WATERMELON-CUCUMBER COOLERS (save the pulp to eat later).

Cucumber Water

So, I first had this at a pretty bitchin' birthday pot luck recently. It was really nice, because I wasn't drinking, so a non-alcoholic option that wasn't just plain old water was an unexpected surprise! Lucky enough for me, I dumpstered a cucumber a few days later and was able to recreate it the way my friend Keith had made it.

(My cat, Iggy, even posed for the picture!)

CUCUMBER WATER

Ingredients:
- Cucumber
- Water
- Basil or Mint (optional)

Throw some thick slices of cucumber (and some basil or mint if you want) in some water. Let it steep for a few hours (or overnight) in the fridge. Serve it up!

You can re-use the cucumbers a few times, but each time the crisp cucumber flavor in the water becomes a bit weaker. The more you experiment, the more you can fine-tune your ratios and batches. I usually use a huge mason jar or pitcher so I have lots of cucumber water to drink over the course of a week!

p.s. you can also do this same exact thing with pineapple. I wouldn't recommend using defrosted pineapple from the freezer, though - it gives the water a weird freezer burn taste that is NOT tasty.

Items not dumpstered or donated: Basil (from garden)

Summer Salads - Sesame Tomato and Citrus Carrot

Now that it's summer, expect more produce in the dumpster (yay)! Also, expect more recipes using that produce (yay)!


SESAME TOMATO SALAD

So, the first time I made this, I made it as a tomato and cucumber salad paired with some similarly marinated tuna steaks, but then I ran out of cucumber and just used tomatoes for a quick snack before work. It still tasted awesome; it was crisp and cool in this suffocating summer heat. Honestly, this recipe is all about the dressing. It doesn't really matter what you put the dressing on, because it will automatically taste delicious. I just have 8 million cherry tomatoes to use right now before they go bad, and this makes me eat them faster than Justin Bieber can run away from a flashmob of tweens.

Ingredients:

These amounts are good for about 1-2 small side servings.

- Cherry tomatoes, halved (add heirlooms if you have them for color and extra flavor like I did) (you can also use regular sized tomatoes if you want)
- Cucumber/whatever (optional) - if you skin the cucumber, you can get fancy and use the shredded bits to garnish the top or do one sliver to make a bowl corral thing for your salad...
- Ginger (about the size of a garlic clove)
- Garlic (0.5-1 clove per serving of tomatoes)
- 1.5 tsp sesame oil
- 1 tbsp white vinegar or rice vinegar
- Toasted sesame seeds
- 2 tsp soy sauce

Shred your ginger onto the tomatoes.
Mince garlic, toss that in.
Pour all the other stuff on top (tweak the ratios if you want more bite).
Serve it.

BOOM. Easy.

This is very similar to the sauce I used with my Bok Choy & Green Beans - the salad dressing is a lighter, more refreshing version (due to the vinegar). However, you could totally substitute raw green beans as your salad material and go to town if you needed to use them up. If I were to use green beans, I'd probably julienne them first so they would absorb more of the juicy stuff. I made this dressing to put on a mostly dumpstered salad at my friends' house and they LOVED it, so I'm pretty sure I'm not insane that this stuff is the nomz.




CITRUS CARROT SALAD

Ingredients:
- Carrots
- Lime juice (lemon can be substituted, but it doesn't taste as good)
- Salt & Pepper to taste. Use fresh cilantro if you're feeling sassy.

Shred or julienne carrots (the thinner the better).
Thoroughly cover in lime juice.
Add salt/pepper/cilantro/whatever to taste (optional - I usually won't add anything).

DONE.

Super easy and refreshing. Plus, you needed ZERO other materials besides those you dumpstered! Amazing!

Items not dumpstered or donated: garlic, ginger, sesame oil, soy sauce, sesame seeds, white vinegar, salt & pepper