Quick Cucumber, Tomato, Onion, and Radish Salad

Quick Cucumber, Tomato, Onion, and Radish Salad

It’s that time of year! No, not all the fresh summer produce salad recipes, but my quickie recipes for when we are headed to the coast again to go fishing and/or crabbing. Once again, we’ll be on another extended weekend trip so am posting this one early instead of Saturday.

We didn’t catch any halibut last trip, it was super-windy with 6-to-8-foot horrible wind waves and our bait wouldn’t stay on the bottom with all the rocking and rolling. Then I got seasick as hell, WAHHH! Hubby will attempt again this weekend, while I’ll stay behind and fish the calm river for salmon.

I was wanting to make a Panzanella salad out of what produce I had on hand, but last minute hubby couldn’t help with the prep of this and ran out of time to make the bread cubes since I didn’t have any stale bread on hand. So this is what I came up with. Lively, fresh, and delicious!

The cucumber came from a friend’s garden, the tomatoes from our own, and the radishes from the farmer’s market. The rest came from the store (organic as possible).

And this would also make a great side dish for a Labor Day BBQ or picnic! This no-mayo recipe makes it a snap to store and serve.

Quick Cucumber, Tomato, Onion, and Radish Salad

1 English cucumber, sliced and quartered (about 2 cups, can be more or less)
1 cup fresh diced tomatoes
1/2 cup diced sweet onion
1/2 cup diced radishes
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
2 teaspoons fresh-squeezed lemon juice
1 teaspoon rice vinegar, or plain white
1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley
Salt and ground black pepper, to taste

Prep all the ingredients, toss in a bowl and stir to combine. Refrigerate one hour or more. Serve with a slotted spoon. See? Quick and easy. Yumm!

Download and Print this Yummy Recipe!

 

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Summer Summer Summertime Fun! (and a Seafood/BBQ Fest!)

My friend caught this snap of me casting a Kwik-Fish for salmon.

Hoo Boy! Where do you start when you had a 9-day camping vacation, get thrown back into work full-time, then have so many blogs to read and laundry and housework to do? I’m slowly catching up on my social networking. I don’t have much for a recipe, per se, rather than a compilation of photos and a few tidbits of what we ate and/or caught to eat at the river on the coast. We had so much fun that I can’t even describe it! I’ll let the photos help tell the story. Enjoy!

Taco Fixin’s ~ First things first! We had an easy meal of tacos our first full day camping.

My husband flipped the other half of our dock over that’s been sitting around upside-down for six years and extended our patio. Our dock is now a deck! (The other half is still serving as a dock in the river.) Here he is screwing in the last of the railings. It made our entertaining space so much bigger!

Finishing the Deck

It made a great place to store firewood for the weekend.

Firewood Storage Place

Between us and our neighbor friends who also traveled from our home town, we caught over 50 crawdads off our docks. It made for a grand feast along with ribs, oysters, and clams that were bought at the store!

Crawdads Caught Off Our Docks

Nom nom! Here we are enjoying fresh barbecued oysters!

Enjoying and Spicing up Fresh BBQ’d Oysters!

And these were just the appetizers!

Seafood Appetizers

Here we are enjoying the feast on our new deck!

Feast on the Deck

Here my husband is pointing out the final details of how to smoke some ribs for one of our meals.

Smoking Ribs with Some Stubb’s BBQ Sauce ~ Oh Yeah!

Of course we had to bring our lovable fur-kids with us to enjoy the life on the river!

Bohdi and Hannah Banana

Rocky and Friend

The evening of 4th of July we had cheese-stuffed cheeseburgers and hot dogs.  You have to have some burgers and dogs on 4th of July! Lip-smacking good!

Cheeseburger Fixin’s

Cheese-Stuffed Cheeseburger

Here is my friend “boasting” how he slayed the Dungeness Crab we caught out in the Siletz Bay for our final dinner. That’s some good eating!

Slaying the Dungeness Crab

I had to make a much-needed pit-stop during our 5-hour crabbing trip on the bay. It was a tad windy out there but we had a grand time!

On the Siletz Bay ~ Our boat needs a new coat of paint, ya’ think?

Black Cormorant and Seagull ~ Common Seabirds Seen on the Bay

Last, one of my friends helped my husband get my owl box permanently installed in a tree on our property. I’ll have to put up a “for rent” sign to get a barn owl family to move in and rid the property of the pesky moles and mice.

Barn Owl Box in Permanent Position

Cheers to great friends, cheap beer, seafood fests and barbecues, and a good old-fashioned 4th of July! 😀

Cheers!

Happy 4th of July and Grilled Chicken Fajitas

Grilled Chicken Fajitas

Well if WordPress auto-publishing works as planned (and sometimes it doesn’t) then you’ll be reading this post while I’m off at our river property on the coast with no cell-phone and internet for a week.

Since I’ve been gone since last Saturday (as you read this) I obviously didn’t have (and won’t have) a new recipe for you this week.

But I’ll just share one for the heck of it so that I can wish you a Happy and Safe 4th of July, and then you’ll know I didn’t drop off the face of the earth.

Here is a great grilling recipe for a crowd if you are having a BBQ going on for the holiday.

The link to the recipe: Grilled Chicken Fajitas

Happy 4th of July and God Bless America!

Spicy Skillet Corn with Tomatoes

Spicy Skillet Corn with Tomatoes

This corn dish is a bright and tasty accompaniment to any barbecue, and was served Labor Day with huge slabs of baby back ribs my mom grilled and cooked. I had my parents and uncle from out of town over for the holiday, and the entire meal was cooked by all. I did the corn and cole slaw, my mom did the ribs, and my husband whipped up a huge batch of his potato salad. Even my daughter pitched in and made chocolate-covered banana slices for dessert. My father and uncle pitched in by helping us to eat this huge quantity of food.

The original recipe didn’t have tomatoes, but with my cherry tomato plants exploding with ripe red balls of sweetness, it was a no-brainer for me to chop some up and add them in. I used some delicious fresh white sweet corn on the cob, and the spiciness of the chiles combined with the tartness of the lime and the sweetness of the corn and tomato made this side dish shine! I hope you think so too.

Spicy Skillet Corn with Tomatoes

Adapted from Southwest Corn Skillet with Chili and Lime from Barefeet in the Kitchen

1 tablespoon butter
4 ears of fresh sweet corn, kernels removed from the cob
Lots of ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon Hungarian sweet paprika
1/4 teaspoon New Mexico red chile powder
3 strips of bacon, torn into bite-sized pieces
1 cup of cherry tomatoes, quartered
Juice of 1/2 lime

Heat a large skillet over medium heat and melt the butter. Add the rest of the ingredients except the tomatoes and lime juice and stir to heat through, about five minutes. Add the tomatoes and lime juice and toss to combine. Remove from skillet and serve immediately with your meal. Easy and delicious!

Note: You can omit the bacon if you want. But hey, we had bacon left from the potato salad my husband made, so….what the heck.

Spicy Skillet Corn with Tomatoes