Cucumbers

Elaine Marie Smith from Reisterstown was looking for a recipe for making creamed cucumbers like the ones her mother used to serve. She said she remembers that her mother used to soak the sliced cucumbers overnight in salt water then drain them and mix them with a creamed dressing of some kind. Virginia Terzian from Santa Rosa, Calif., sent in her family recipe for creamed cucumbers that she is certain Smith will enjoy. She said her mother, Viola Knapp, who was wonderful cook from Pennsylvania Dutch country, always served this cucumber dish with string beans, potatoes and ham or as a side dish with Weiner Schnitzel when she was growing up. She said the recipe must be at least 100 years old and is still one of her favorites.

Elaine Marie Smith from Reisterstown was looking for a recipe for making creamed cucumbers like the ones her mother used to serve. She said she remembers that her mother used to soak the sliced cucumbers overnight in salt water then drain them and mix them with a creamed dressing of some kind. Virginia Terzian from Santa Rosa, Calif., sent in her family recipe for creamed cucumbers that she is certain Smith will enjoy. She said her mother, Viola Knapp, who was wonderful cook from Pennsylvania Dutch country, always served this cucumber dish with string beans, potatoes and ham or as a side dish with Weiner Schnitzel when she was growing up. She said the recipe must be at least 100 years old and is still one of her favorites.

Cucumbers give me indigestion. Eating them is no problem. It's harvesting the fruit that tends to upset me.Every year I raise cucumbers (that patch of ground was rototilled last week.) Every year the prolific vines run rampant over the garden, lawn and patio. And every year, at picking time, I go nuts trying to corral the cukes themselves.Ripening cucumbers like to play hide-and-seek, concealing themselves beneath a thicket of dark green vines 20 feet wide. This throws gardeners like me into a tizzy.

There's more to summer cocktails than mojitos or margaritas; sure they get the job done, but they aren't nearly as refreshing as Mr. Rain's sinfully made Eve's Habit. The Funhouse, a culinary wonderland atop the American Visionary Art Museum , loves to serve patrons drinks as innovative and quirky as their artistic digs. I loved Eve's Habit, served as part of a flight of handcrafted cocktails called The Garden Variety. As the title suggests, ingredients are inspired by fresh, seasonal produce: red bell pepper-infused gin, fresh citruses and herbs, organic rum infused with hibiscus, ginger and cardamom.

About the only good thing I can say about our weather is that the cucumbers seem to like it. This recent mixture of sledgehammer heat and humidity may make us feel lower than a snake in a wagon rut, but for cucumbers, it is propagation time. They are popping off the vines.There are not a whole lot of folks who care for the weather, or for cucumbers. Cucumbers do not have a large, vocal following. Unlike the broccoli legions, cucumbers can not claim to able to prevent cancer, clean your arteries or even give you curly hair.

Writer Gertrude Stein, who famously asserted that all roses are alike, could as easily have said, "A cuke is a cuke is a cuke." And been just as wrong. But then few people know how many kinds of cucumbers we could be slicing into salads, putting pickled on hamburgers or sauteeing with haddock and herbs. "There are 270 varieties of cucumbers here at Heritage Farm," says Kent Whaley, founder of Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah, Iowa. There are pickling cucumbers and American slicing cucumbers, the thick-skinned waxed ones usually sold in the supermarket.

Hilmar Helgason, a Dorchester County farmer, figures he was right in the worst of it - he said he got about 18 inches of rain. That's a disaster for his cucumbers. "It's totally wiped us out," he said, talking on his cell phone as he checked out the damage yesterday. "The ones that are ready to pick, we're not able to get in the field to pick them, and the ones behind them ... disease is getting into them. And a lot of the ones even after that are just drowned - they're under water." Helgason, 47, who farms 900 acres in the Dorchester towns of Eldorado and Hurlock and in Seaford, Del., has about 250 acres in cucumbers, not counting the 20 acres he's already picked.

The market may have taken a dive since the horrifying events of Sept. 11 (a trend only lately reversed, and we shall see how long that lasts). But if you had your money in liquor futures you should be sitting pretty. According to The New York Times last week, imbibers have been packing the saloons of the city in unprecedented numbers. "At a few places - a diverse list including Pravda, the Regency Hotel and McSorley's - liquor sales were 25 percent higher last month than they were in November 2000," the Times reported.

Q. I'm noticing some small, strange bumps on my pecan and peach trees. They are white and black and I can scrape them off with my nail. What in the world are they?A. You're seeing the adult female form of calico scale, a common soft scale that can be observed on many different landscape trees. They cause little damage, and are controlled by beneficial insects such as lady bird beetles.Q. My cucumber plants are big and loaded with blooms. But I'm not getting any cucumbers. Is something wrong with my plants?

Throughout my childhood summers, a crop of cucumbers dangled from my grandmother's fence. Even when I was a toddler, a pick-your-own trip to her back yard was the highlight of any visit. I could wash and eat that cuke, skin and all, while it was still sun-warm and juicy.I've been a cucumber addict ever since.For me, cucumbers make a salad. Their sweet, delicate flavor eased my transition from iceberg to the stronger-flavored salad greens.And when my parents' garden produced fresh cucumbers, our family indulged in a delicious, fat-free, simple-to-make cucumber and onion salad:Peel and thinly-slice any available cucumbers.

The client's in town. The client loves sushi. I want the client to love me. I take the client to Joss Cafe. I pick up the tab. Done deal. You can replace "client" with out-of-town guest, superior officer, love interest, fellow foodie, or anyone else you want to impress, Joss promises to appeal because of two strong leading indicators: fine sushi, great space. Just don't go there expecting bargain-basement tabs. When you walk up half a flight of stairs off the sidewalk on 413 N. Charles and enter Joss, you're stepping up in more ways than one. 12:42 p.m. We enter a sparsely attended dining room and are offered our choice of unoccupied tables.

Bad Decisions owner John Reusing made a name for himself with off beat drinks such as the Cucumber Dill Gin-and-Tonic. His inspiration? Cucumber dill happens to be the flavor of a dip Reusing likes. "I was like, ‘If it's good enough to dip potato chips in, I could probably make something delicious to drink with it,' " he said. Reusing played around with the ingredients some, searching for gins which would bring out the dill and cucumber's natural flavors. Here is Reusing's recipe for the drink: Cucumber Dill Gin and Tonic In a rocks glass gently muddle 2 sprigs of fresh dill Add three long, skinny slices of cucumber Fill with ice, then add: 3/4 oz. of Hendrick's Gin 3/4 oz. Hayman's Old Tom Gin Fill with tonic water Add two drops of Gioiello Nonino Citrus Tree Honey Spirit on top of the drink Sam Sessa

Well, now we know the whole locavore thing really has arrived. An aspiring groom opted against the old fancy-schmancy restaurant setting and popped the question a couple of Sundays ago at the Baltimore farmers' market. After blowing an air horn to get the crowd's attention, Will Hester got down on one knee at his pickle booth and offered Gwynne Harper his briny hand in marriage. "I was wearing the money belt pouch and smelling of pickles," said Hester, 31. No telling what Freud would have said about a marriage proposal at a pickle booth.

The flowers of my cucumber plants are falling off. How can I get cucumbers? Early female flowers usually fall off without setting fruit because no male flowers have opened yet. Once the males show up, if no pollination occurs it indicates a lack of pollinators. It takes 10 to 12 visits from a pollinator to make a cucumber, and honey bee numbers are down because they're suffering from parasitic mites. Encourage other pollinators by planting bee-attracting flowers and avoiding insecticides.

Chalk up two more haunts for Fells Point. Not places where you can grab your favorite brewski, but rather where you can find your favorite brew. Eclectic Cafe and Creperie and Smedly's are the latest additions to that neighborhood's growing number of coffeehouses. Owners Susan Singer and Stephen Schulhoff opened Eclectic on the side of a similarly named store that sells international home decor, clothing and gifts. Singer says they wanted to have someplace where people could relax and get a little something to eat. The red tile floor and white walls give the eating area a casual, European country kind of feel.

Holding up a slimy leek at the Baltimore Farmers' Market yesterday, Earl Martin said the torrential rains that soaked the region are causing the vegetables he grows to "melt." "Have you ever seen decomposed grass?" Martin, 41, asked. "That's what the fields look like." Minus the rotting stalk, the leek he displayed is at least edible, he said. But he estimates the rains ruined 25 percent of the crops at his Perry Hall farm. Growers selling produce yesterday told horror stories of drowned pumpkins, waterlogged watermelons, soupy muck under the drying topsoil, and fields so full of water they could only be crossed with a rowboat.

Like Mexican salsa, Indian chutney has become a global condiment. In the United States and United Kingdom, chutneys tend to be thought of as thick, sweet-sour preserves to eat with baked ham or roast pork. But there's another side to chutney.In India, chutneys are prepared fresh daily. Made from a variety of fruits, vegetables, nuts and herbs combined with chilies and spices, these fresh chutneys can be intensely hot and spicy. They are eaten sparingly throughout the meal to add flavor, stimulate appetite and promote digestion.

Does the thought of cooking in August make you wilt? Can't face grilling another burger in the sweltering heat? Then borrow from the cuisines of our hot-weather neighbors in Mexico, Thailand and India who know how to cool down with fiery foods. Chiles, whole and ground peppers, curries, ginger and the coolest cucumber of them all - cilantro - lower the body temperature by turning on our natural cooling system. In short, spicy foods make us sweat. Couple these ingredients with cold dishes, and summer eating doesn't get much better.

Hilmar Helgason, a Dorchester County farmer, figures he was right in the worst of it - he said he got about 18 inches of rain. That's a disaster for his cucumbers. "It's totally wiped us out," he said, talking on his cell phone as he checked out the damage yesterday. "The ones that are ready to pick, we're not able to get in the field to pick them, and the ones behind them ... disease is getting into them. And a lot of the ones even after that are just drowned - they're under water." Helgason, 47, who farms 900 acres in the Dorchester towns of Eldorado and Hurlock and in Seaford, Del., has about 250 acres in cucumbers, not counting the 20 acres he's already picked.