Garden Update & A nice COOL run!

Here's what we picked from our garden on Saturday, 7/17:

We used most of the tomatoes and two bell peppers by just cutting them up and cooking them in some olive oil and serving over pasta.

And here's what we picked from our garden Thursday 7/22:

We're still working on using this stuff up... Saturday morning we had tomato and pepper omelets for breakfast.

Some banana peppers cut up

Last night we cut up some of the above cucumbers and some of the tomatoes and tossed with a little dressing and had a cucumber and tomato salad before dinner. I must say, the big tomatoes are SO flavorful compared to what you find on your sandwich or in your salad at most restaurants.

Look how red those tomatoes are inside!

I'd also just like to say...yesterday we had a serious thunderstorm roll in with heavy rain and high winds. It cooled things off quite nicely (for the rest of the day anyway). Last night I ran an easy 4 miles at 9:30 pm and it was only 72 out and breezy. It was glorious!! I headed out with my watch, cell phone, and my fun little clip on blinking light for visibility:


I just ran at what felt like a comfortable, easy pace, without checking my watch continuously (only when it beeped at me every mile to check my pace). My pace per mile was about 15 seconds faster than my last "easy" 4 mile run on Friday morning, and my average heart rate over the course of the run was 16 bpm slower. Woo hoo!

I am not ready for summer to be over, but when you run outside, cool days/evenings are greatly appreciated! It gave me a little confidence boost. As it's been so hot, I've been worrying about being able to run the pace I want to for the half marathon in 2 months. Hopefully it won't be above 80 on that day and I can know that when it's cooler I will be able to run at a faster speed, more easily than I can in the weather we've been having for the past month. I checked my notes on my Garmin Connect program and saw that the last time I ran outside when it was at least 72 or cooler was June 30th (last night's pace was faster and my HR was slower than my June 30th run too, hopefully that's an indication of progress). It's been nearly a month since I've been able to run in weather that cool. Anyway, back into the 90s this week, but at least our overnight lows are going to be around 70 again, maybe I will plan for more evening or early morning runs when I can.

Cucumbers

We have a 20 x 20 plot at the "community garden" in the town where we live. We have planted super sweet tomatoes, roma tomatoes, big boy tomoatoes, a "purple heirloom" tomato, banana peppers, bell peppers, cayenne peppers, baby romaine, cucumbers, pole beans, and mint (for mojitos, of course).


We planted the cucumbers as very small plants and they really took off right away. By mid June we had several good sized cucumbers growing.

At the end of June we had a decent little cucumber harvest... then didn't really know what to do with them all. Before this harvest we had two ripen individually - we snacked on one/used it in salads, and the other one we gave away. But now we had 5 all at the same time!

My husband found a recipe for Emeril Lagasse's Cold Cucumber Soup. Thanks to our handy dandy immersion blender (one of our best mini appliances!) he made this soup. The main modifications made to the recipe were that we used lowfat yogurt, light sour cream, and substituted a little more yogurt in place of some of the sour cream. Picked up a loaf of multigrain sourdough bread and voila- we had a meal.


In fact, I think this batch gave us 6 or 7 meal-sized bowls of soup. I haven't had cold soup very often (I think we made gazpacho once last summer), but I thought it was pretty good - had a bit of a kick to it too, thanks to the jalapeno and cayenne peppers.

Know any good cucumber recipes?