Grit

COOL AS A CUCUMBER

More often than not, there’s a cucumber salad on my dinner table in the summertime. Any leftover salad is eagerly finished the next day, served atop scrambled eggs, spooned up with a hunk of feta, or stuffed into a pita pocket with turkey for a quick lunch. Once my garden starts yielding cucumbers, they don’t stop coming. This isn’t a problem, but simply a seasonal phenomenon — and a welcome one at that.

Most seed catalogs have a category for “salad cucumbers” or “slicing cucumbers.” They’re the classic, large, dark-green cucumbers. These cultivars were developed for commercial growers for their high yields, resistance to damage from cucumber beetles, and admirable shipping attributes. The cucumbers hold up fairly well in the refrigerator, which is why they’re the marketing standard

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