Making the Most of Abundance.

One good tip to being frugal is to have a garden. That story is for another time because being the boring old fart that I am, I have put some time into it and worked out some dollars and cents on the issue, how much money it can mean to you.

The problem for the home gardener is like the lyric from a Johnny Mathis song," Too much, too little, too late"...well the song is a love song actually but at least that part of the lyric has relevance for the home gardener. You grow too much, you grow too little and it is always too late to change what you need to, to fix the problem.

Okay, Christmas has just passed and New Year so I had not been as diligent at looking after the garden so when I finally popped my head between the leaves of the cucumber plant to look down into the green forest beneath I was surprised by finding not a few small cute lebanese cucumbers but a dozen marrow sized cucumbers. Luckily I love cucumbers and they tasted great but there were still too many to cope with without wasting them. So what to do?

There is always  relishes and chutneys to make. Easy, but we didn't have everything we needed and town is too far away for a causal jaunt just to get a few supplies. After looking online, I decided to make cucumber noodles!

First I have to cut my own noodles. Peel the cucumber a little, I used a zester to scrape away some of the skin. Then cutting carefully leaving all the seeds behind I had numerous large slices of cucumber. Again carefully I sliced these finely into a collection of noodles.

These were dropped into boiling water  for just over a minute then drained and quickly cooled under cold water.

Later, I heated some oil in a  fry pan and threw in the cucumber noodles with a few tablespoons of chopped mint. These were sauteed for a minute or so and a small glob of butter added for the last 30 secs of cooking. These were served as a side. Beautiful, wow, yahoo, shadang! Definately will do that again. Having tried cooked cucumber, I am using cucumber pieces in a stir fry tonight.

Making the most of what you have without letting it go to waste, frugality 101!

 Dinner. Beans, potato,corn from the garden, a roast vegetable warm salad with feta cheese and the cucumber noodles. On the side is a wild leaf salad of chickweed, nasturtium, carrot thinnings, sow thistle, vietnamese mint and a few cherry tomatoes from the garden. Full of flavour and yummo!