Summertime favorite garden dish.

[JSinMO]

With the garden producing some nice cucumbers we decided to make a summer time favorite.
Cucumbers and onions in vinegar.

I know it’s a common dish everybody makes but seeing the smiles on the family’s faces as they were having a bowl sure felt good!

[Eugen]

Jeff, we here know that simple dishes taste great with veggies from the garden. Can't wait for our cucumbers to grow! This is ours.

[RoamingGnome]

says the only thing missing is sliced wee tomatoes... your photo brought back lots of childhood summertime memories for her

[propane1]

Never had it with onions in it. Woo hoo, some thing for me to try soon.
I like cabbage cut up, in a bowl of water. And as you take out the pieces of cabbage, you whack a little salt on them.
Tasty.

Noel

[Spike188]

Last 2 quart of Last years canned tomatoes being cooked down for pizza sauce. But M ran me out of the kitchen while she makes a custard for raspberries picked from our garden today.

Outside is not a bad place to cook down sauce.

[Eugen]

Eugene, that's a big raspberry bush. We planted a small bush last year and so far it's doing well, but of course no berries yet. So you make pizza? That's something we've been thinking about but have not acted on it yet.

[Spike188]

@Eugen I pressure can about 30 quarts of whole skinned tomatoes each summer. It is less time consuming than making large volumes of paste or sauce during canning season. When making one large pizza, step 1 is opening a quart of tomatoes and mashing them, adding garlic, onion, basil, oregano, and fennel. One quart cooks down to about 1 pint. Step 2 is mixing the the dough, mixing and rise time takes about an hour. There is enough time left during the dough proofing (using regular yeast) for cutting vegetables, grating cheese, and prepping meat for toppings. By the time the pizza sauce is cooked down and ready, the dough will be ready for rolling out.

M just bought a ceramic pizza stone at a thrift store for $10.00. Bread just finished baking so the oven temp was boosted to 500F and the stone was preheated . The pizza was transferred onto parchment paper and placed on the preheated stone. Cook time was 12 minutes. We usually figure 1-1/2 hours from start of prep to end of bake.

The canning list this summer includes 20 quart of whole stewed tomatoes, 20 quarts of tomato juice, beets, peaches, and wild grape juice and jelly. I have reduced salt intake dramatically as a way to reduce blood pressure. Home canning with out salt or other spices makes it easy to tailor flavours at meal prep time. We often flip between Tex-mex, Thai, and stir fries.

[Eugen]

@Spike188 thanks! You've actually answered another question I had too, about the ingredients in the sauce. Do you use just regular flour for the pizza? We looked around for pizza flour but it's not easy to find and really expensive.

[JSinMO]

@Spike188 my mouth is watering! I’d like to order two large pizzas with everything on them. What’s the delivery charge to Missouri?

Sometimes we get the old chef Boyardee pizza dough in a box and make one at home but it’s sure not nearly as good as what you’re cooking!

[Spike188]

@Eugen The recipe on the right is my favorite dough, using all purpose flour. Typically for the 2 of us, 1/2 of the dough gets frozen for later use. The sauce and topping part is a guidline only. As far as spices go, adding a bit of fennel and adjusting the amounts ratios is different every time I bake.

I will sometime make a jar of premixed spices for pizza sause that is convenient for eliminating measuring individual ingredients.

I went for 12 minutes at 500f on the stone last night. Was very happy with the results but will try 450f and 15 minutes next time.