Jerri’s Cucumber and Tomato Salad

“Everyone knows how to make cucumber and tomato salad,” said Jerri when I told her I was going to post her recipe. It is a simple thing to make and takes only five minutes or so, but if everyone knew how to make it, why did I keep seeing so many plastic deli containers filled with cucumber and tomato salad?

It couldn’t be the time or expense. Stopping at the supermarket, standing in line at the deli and waiting to check out will take at least ten minutes and probably longer if you get behind me when I am trying to find a dime in my pocket to give the clerk the exact change. As for the cost, the ingredients are inexpensive, especially in season. If you are as blessed with gardener friends as we are, the cucumbers and tomatoes are often free and tastier than most of the ones you buy.

Someone might say, “But I don’t have any olive oil, vinegar, basil or oregano.” All I can say is “You should,” because these are ingredients you can use in so many ways. You can buy the herbs in bulk packages at a supermarket or food coop at a reasonable price, and they last a long time. Adding some olive oil, basil and oregano to a jar of commercial spaghetti sauce or sprinkled on a frozen pizza can turn an ordinary meal into a special dinner, and you need a bottle of vinegar in the house anyway to clean your coffee maker from time to time.

The one thing that may be keeping a lot of people from making their own cucumber and tomato salad is a lack of confidence in their tastebuds. Since virtually all of us have tastebuds that work, it is merely a matter of letting them tell you whether something tastes good or not. A fine chef or gourmet food critic will have tastebuds that are more sensitive than ours, but the important thing is always, “Does it taste good to me?”

When you make your first batch of cucumber and tomato salad, follow the recipe below as best you can. However, your cucumbers or tomatoes may be a little smaller or larger than Jerri would call medium. If they are smaller, your salad may be a little saltier than you like or have a little too much oil or vinegar. You can fix that by adding more cucumber or tomato. If they are larger, add more seasonings. It’s simple. Trust your tastebuds.

Grab your peeler and a sharp knife and make yourself a bowl of a great salad for a summer dinner.

INGREDIENTS:

2 medium cucumbers
2 Roma tomatoes
2 T chopped onion
1 T fresh basil or 1 tsp. dried crushed basil
1 tsp. fresh oregano or 1/3 tsp. dried crushed oregano
1 T extra virgin olive oil
1 1/2 T cider vinegar
1/4 tsp. salt
A grind of black pepper

PROCEDURE:

Wash and peel the cucumbers, leaving some thin green strips of peel for color. Cut the cucumbers in half lengthwise and remove the seeds if you wish. Then slice the cucumbers into quarter-inch half rounds. Put them in a mixing bowl and sprinkle with the salt. Let them stand while preparing the other ingredients.

Wash and remove the stem scar from the tomatoes. Chop them into bite-sized pieces. Chop about two tablespoons of onion into a quarter-inch dice. If you are using fresh herbs, wash and chop the basil and oregano.

Stir the vegetables and herbs together in the mixing bowl. Sprinkle the olive oil, vinegar and pepper over the salad and mix gently but thoroughly. Let it stand a minute and stir again.

Taste and adjust the seasonings to suit.

NOTES: This salad is almost good enough to justify keeping an herb garden in your home year round, but it tastes good with dried herbs too. We use fresh in the summer and dried in the winter.

Real Ice Cream

I had my first taste of something approaching real ice cream when I was seven or eight years old. We had moved into the country about four miles north of Hayward, but the milkman from West’s Dairy still delivered our milk twice a week just as he had in town. It was whole milk that had not been homogenized, just like God gave it to us from the friendly cows of Wisconsin.

One very cold morning, when I went to the front porch to bring in the milk bottles, I found them with the paper caps pushed out of the bottles and globs of frozen cream rising out of the tops. Mom explained that when the milk began freezing ice crystals formed that took up more space in the bottle than the milk. The cream in the milk had risen to the top, and the freezing milk pushed the cream out the top of the bottle.

With a teaspoon she gave my sisters and me a taste and had a little herself. It tasted wonderful, and I still judge every scoop of ice cream by that sample I enjoyed so long ago. That’s when I learned that real ice cream is basically frozen cream. Just consider what the name means.

I am not saying that I don’t enjoy many different brands and styles of ice cream available in shops and stores, but only a few are real ice cream. Unfortunately, many are made with chemicals that reduce the need for cream, slow the ice cream from melting or extend its shelf life.

If you want to test whether a commercial ice cream is real, let a little of it melt in a bowl. If the melted liquid looks like half and half or whipping cream, all is well. If it resembles something in the bottom of a paint can, there are a lot of strange chemicals in that puddle.

Making ice cream is easy if you have an ice cream freezer. We never had one when I was growing up, so Mom experimented with no-crank recipes using condensed milk as well as cream. I remember watching her carefully stirring half-frozen ice cream in those old aluminum ice cube trays with the removable dividers. It was a treat, but it didn’t compare with the ice cream from West’s Dairy in Hayward.

When West’s stopped delivering milk to customers in the country, we had to pick it up at the store in Hayward. One time, when I was eight or nine, Dad sent me in to buy the milk while he waited in the car. As I recall, a half gallon cost something like forty-seven cents. I am sure about the seven, because he gave me two pennies plus a couple of quarters.

When I got in the car, I was on top of the world, because the clerk had given me the pennies back along with the nickel change. This prompted my father to give me a lecture about honesty. “You know that is not your money, so take those pennies back in and explain that she made a mistake.” So I did, and I never forgot that lesson.

Incidentally, West’s Dairy is still making good ice cream in the same building on Second and Dakota in Hayward where we bought our milk. Jeff Miller bought the dairy with his partner in 2005 from Bruce West, who took over the business when his father retired. Jeff just published Scoop, a memoir about their first year in Hayward. It’s a fun read about living in a small town with some memorable passages involving people who resemble characters I knew sixty years ago.

But back to making real ice cream. After we received a hand-crank freezer from our best man and his wife at our wedding, we became serious ice cream makers. For the first few years of our marriage we lived in Virginia and Kentucky, two states where you needed to make your own ice cream if you wanted the real stuff.

Today we have an electric ice cream freezer, and we make ice cream only once or twice each summer. There are dozens of recipes for ice cream. Ours is simple.

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups whipping cream
2 cups half and half
3/4 cup sugar
2 tsp. vanilla extract
Dash of salt
Ice
Salt

PROCEDURE:

At least three hours before you plan to make the ice cream, whisk together the cream, half and half, vanilla extract and salt. Put the mixture into the refrigerator to get it good and cold.

Put the freezer canister and beater into the freezer of your refrigerator a half hour before you plan to start making the ice cream.

Follow the directions you got with the freezer to pack the freezer with ice and salt to turn the cream into ice cream.

Eat and enjoy.

NOTES: Real ice cream is good plain, but fresh raspberries, strawberries or peaches don’t hurt. Topping a couple of scoops with homemade hot fudge sauce is another good way to go.

Some recipes call for more vanilla. Ignore them. You want to taste the cream.