Old Liz's Old-Fashioned Cucumber & Tomato Salad Recipe ♥
Big chunks of cucumber with tomato and onion in a simple balsamic vinegar dressing. Low carb. Weight Watchers friendly, just PointsPlus 2! Not just vegan, "Vegan Done Real". This recipe originates from rural Missouri and a 1940s farm wife widowed young with four children, the youngest only 18 months old.
It's plain. It's thrifty. It's filling. I suspect Old Liz might tsk-tsk me to task for even calling it a recipe. My mind hears her harumph, "It's just cucumbers and tomatoes from the garden. Don't make a fuss." So no more imagining a woman whose spirit I can know only through the legacy of her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren – and her cucumber salad. Maybe she wouldn't mind just a small fuss.
This is a good salad for those baseball-bat sized cucumbers from the garden. It needs a good rest before supper (30 minutes, say) but is even better the next day.
MORE OLD-TIME CUCUMBER RECIPES These are also simple cucumber salads. The first is how my grandmother made a cucumber salad with sour cream, Nana's Cucumbers with Sour Cream. The other is another classic, Cucumbers in Vinegar, my food blogging friend Danielle's Ima's cucumber salad. Plus, when we visited Karina from Karina's Kitchen near Santa Fe, just look what she made for my birthday supper, her very own gluten-free version of Old Liz's Cucumber Salad!
OLD LIZ's OLD-FASHIONED CUCUMBER & TOMATO SALAD RECIPE
Hands-on time: 15 minutes
Time to table: 45 minutes
Serves 8
Time to table: 45 minutes
Serves 8
1 extra large cucumber
2 small pickling cucumbers
1 small tomato, chopped
1 small onion, sliced thin in half rings
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar (white balsamic vinegar won't stain the cucumber!)
1 teaspoon sugar
1 tablespoon olive oil
Salt & pepper to taste
Peel and seed the large cucumber, then cut into chunks. Slice off the stem and blossom ends of the pickling cucumbers; in ribbons, peel off about half the skin (leaving some skin on adds crunch and some color) and then slice cross-wise to form rounds. Combine with remaining ingredients. Let rest for about 30 minutes or overnight.
NUTRITION INFORMATION Per Serving: 48 Calories; 2g Tot Fat; 0g Sat Fat; 7g Carb; 1g Fiber; 6NetCarb; 5mg Sodium; 0mg Cholesterol; 1g Protein. WEIGHT WATCHERS POINTS Old Points 1 & PointsPlus 1
WEIGHT WATCHERS POINTS Old Points 1 & PointsPlus 1
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MORE CUCUMBER SALADS
~ Julia Child's Cucumber Salad ~~ Smitten Kitchen's Avocado-Cucumber Salad ~
~ Corn & Cucumber Salad with Fresh Blueberries ~
~ more cucumber recipes ~
from A Veggie Venture
~ Cucumber & Pepper Refrigerator Pickles ~
~ Cucumber Dip with Feta ~
~ Easy Baked Fish with Red Pepper & Cucumber Salad ~
~ more cucumber recipes ~
from Kitchen Parade, my food column
COOKING IN SEASON: THIS SAME WEEK ACROSS THE YEARS
Turkey on Pita with Tomatillo Sauce
Veggie Burritos with Cilantro Sauce (< Meatless Monday pick!) Tomato-Tomato Roasted Nopalito Tomatillo Salsa Pepper & Tomato Salad Baked Parmesan Tomatoes Elise's Tomato Gazpacho (< every summer, so good!) OOO Zesty Green Beans Summer Borscht Roasted Baby Eggplant Halves with Herbs Old Liz's Old-Fashioned Cucumber Salad (< Pinterest loves this!) Homemade Blueberry Vinaigrette Tomato Platter with Olives & Feta (< easy + pretty!) Cool-as-a-Cucumber Avocado SoupA Veggie Venture is home of "veggie evangelist" Alanna Kellogg and the
famous asparagus-to-zucchini Alphabet of Vegetables.
© Copyright Kitchen Parade 2008, 2009 & 2015 (repub)
famous asparagus-to-zucchini Alphabet of Vegetables.
© Copyright Kitchen Parade 2008, 2009 & 2015 (repub)
Try White Balsamic, it's the best!!! It comes in a spritz bottle, you'll just love it.
ReplyDeleteKaren
What a great summer recipe - simple, delicious and (for many) straight from the garden. You just can't beat that!
ReplyDeleteOld-fashioned cucumber salad, this is just like the salad my mother made too. I haven't made it for my family in years, thank you, I will now, for supper tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteThis looks great. While we can still get pickling cukes, I'm going to give this a try. Thanks for the recipe!
ReplyDeleteKaren ~ Thanks for the tip! I didn't think of it until too late, this batch. With cucumbers coming out the kazoo, I still have another chance!
ReplyDeleteLisa ~ Lucky gardeners, lucky recipients of gardens.
Anon ~ So glad to bring back the memory.
I Am Gluten Free ~ Another certain gluten-free blogger noticed the same thing. Coming soon to a blog near you! :-)
Alanna,
ReplyDeleteI just got a whole bunch of pickling cucumbers from my CSA. Some are destined for a jar, but I was planning to use the rest for salads. This recipe looks simple and tasty. Thanks!
Alexa ~ Perfect. It's definitely a salad that adds up to more than you'd think. Old Liz will approve!
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ReplyDeleteI LOVED this salad as a child, My Grandmother made it for special summer events. BUT I GUARANTEE YOU, that she had NEVER heard of OLIVE OIL in the Midwest in the 1950s. What would they have used instead? And I don't remember it being oily at ALL, IS it POSSIBLE that she did a fast pickle with the vinegar and did not include the oil? I ask, because almost all of her recipes where lost in a flood. The ones that I could save are cryptic at best. Meaning that they would read. Flour, milk, sugar, mix together... Umm THANKS GRANDMOTHER! Could you tell me from heaven HOW MUCH of each?? ;-) Bless her heart. ;-)
ReplyDeleteAnonymous ~ Haha! You are so right about the olive oil! What would it have been, then, a vegetable oil like Crisco??? That’s my guess. Or yes, as you suggest, maybe “no oil “ at all. Thanks so much for writing, your enthusiasm made my day! :-)
ReplyDeleteMy grandmother and mother made cucumbers & sour cream when I was just a little tyke. The difference from your recipe is that after slicing the cucumbers thinly, salting and resting in the fridge, with a dish over the bowl, we squeezed the water out before adding the chives, sour cream & seasoning. We also made a tomato, cuke and sour cream salad, dicing the tomatoes and cukes, adding chives and seasoning, then mixing with sour cream. These recipes taste best when using fresh from the garden tomatoes and cukes. I don’t think store bought would have the flavor so I’ve never made it with store bought.
ReplyDeleteJune ~ Thank you for sharing your memories! You’ve got me hankering for cucumbers and sour cream -- my grandmother, hmm, maybe both grandmothers? made them like yours did! And you are so right about making this with garden cucumbers and tomatoes. For us, this year, that means waiting a bit cuz so far we’ve yet to get to a ripe tomato before the critters! I’m so glad you wrote, thank you.
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