Cucumbers are one of my favorite vegetables. I add them to salads. I have them plain. I even toss them into a bowl, dipping them into olive oil as a snack. Cucumbers are great. That’s why for this Freedom Friday post I’m going to share with you one of my absolute favorite cucumber salad recipes ever. If you’re looking for something to eat on a Sunday afternoon, this is the recipe for you.
My cucumber salad recipe
Although tailored for summer fun, this recipe came from my ongoing experimentation with different food combinations. If anything, this dish has more of a Greek/Mediterranean flavor combination suitable for an evening get-together with friends and family alike. But it doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it any other time.
Let’s get to it.
Here are the ingredients you’ll need:
Half an English cucumber
1 avocado
Half a lemon
Oregano
Half a garlic clove
Salt
Fresh ground pepper
Greek olives
Feta cheese
Olive oil
Directions:
Cut an English cucumber in half, peel it and slice it into small pieces, and add it to a deep bowl. Some folks like keeping the skin on the cucumber, which is great because the skin has lot of vitamins. In this case, however, I peel it to give the dish a particular flavor I’ve grown to like. Nonetheless, you can keep the peel if you want.
Chop half a garlic clove and add it to the bowl. Trust me, adding half a garlic is being stingy. I’m Italian, garlic runs in our veins. Too much garlic is never enough.
Now, add oregano, fresh ground pepper, salt, Greek olives, a generous dousing of olive oil and a splash of lemon juice. Regarding the amounts to add, I can answer that simply by saying “to taste”. I love oregano, so I add quite a bit of it. The same goes for the fresh ground pepper, nothing quite like the flavor to surprise someone trying it for the first time.
Toss the ingredients with salad spoons or ordinary spoons for that matter.
The last step is to scoop the meat from an avocado into the bowl. Add a good amount of feta cheese on top and you’re good to go. The reason we don’t toss the final ingredients in the salad is to avoid them from getting soggy. No one wants a mushy salad.
IngredientsCucumber diced in bowlSpices addedBefore tossing the ingredientsThe complete dish
I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I do. If you ever do try it out, make it part of a BBQ on a hot summer evening and let me know what you think.
I enjoy food as much as the next guy. In fact, I would venture to say, I eat for the shear pleasure. I never used to be this way. Most of my meals years ago had trouble staying in my mouth more than a few seconds before they hit the bottom of my stomach. I ate fast. I played hard. And lived for no tomorrow. Of course, I don’t do that anymore, and I’m happier and healthier for it.
A full pantry (Photo Credit: theperfectpantry.com)
I thought for Freedom Friday you’d appreciate a few tricks I have up my sleeve whenever I’m in the kitchen cooking a meal. I’ve always wanted to write these tips in a notebook, but how can that happen if I’m either in the kitchen cooking for the family or at my laptop writing other stuff? And don’t worry, although I write about zombies it doesn’t mean I am one. I’ll leave the undead to worry about eating brains.
Let me start by saying every kitchen needs a few basic ingredients. Salt, pepper, and olive oil make it almost into every meal. That’s why our family buys those ingredients in bulk. If you have a cold room or pantry, you can store the basics in there for a long time before you need to stock the shelves again. I suppose you can do the same thing with toilet paper, but I’d recommend not eating toilet paper.
Here’s something I’ve learned when I went on a one-year viewing binge of Food Network Canada. Chances are I picked up a thing or two here and there as I watched, however, one of the coolest tips I got from them has to do with knowing when the oil in the pan is hot enough for frying. All you do is wet your finger with water and allow a drop to fall to the pan. If the water snaps in the pan, then you know it’s perfect for frying.
Which reminds me, if you’re going to try this trick, make sure you stand well back from the pan. You don’t want to make your meal to-go, as in going to the hospital ‘cause your eye was an inch away from the pan.
How to hold a chef’s knife (Photo Credit: stellaculinary.com)
You’d think holding a knife is easy. Not at Casa Flacco. When I’m cutting vegetables, I grasp the knife by the handle, curling my index finger to the side of the blade while my thumb leans on the other side, half on the blade and half of the handle. Not only is it safe, but you have better control of the cutting. With the other hand, I curl my fingers so as my fingernails fall at a ninety-degree angle on the vegetable. Then, I cut with a rhythm, rocking the knife on its tip as I bring the blade down on the vegetable. I learned this technique from one of these fancy-shmancy chefs in order to prevent a premature amputation of a digit.
The proper cut (Photo Credit: besthomechef.com.au)
Not so much a tip as it is a recommendation, but enjoying your food ranks up there with turning off the stove when you’re done with it. It involves not rushing through your meal so you can spend countless of senseless hours in front of a screen. I’ve done it many times and it doesn’t do justice to the digestive tract. Eating your food at a leisurely pace invokes a relaxed atmosphere conducive to pleasure. The food settles better, too. I know, it’s hard to do in this day and age where we’re rushing everywhere. But it beats ravaging a side of steer and washing it down with a gallon of gin.
If you haven’t figured it out, I write about a lot of stuff. Food. Travel. Photography. You know, the basic things that make life interesting. One topic I’ve mentioned in passing but never really delved in deeply is my affinity to taking walks. Those who know me know I’m out and about more often than not in the middle of the woods. Early to late fall is also one of my favorite seasons. Therefore, it goes without saying, I’m in my element during this time of year. And what better way to introduce my walking journeys than to write about them for Freedom Friday?
The long and winding path.
Someone asked me how I keep so trim. I would use the word emaciated but that’s just me. Thin is another polite word for saying I look all skin and bones. I don’t mind when folks call me skinny, after all, I am my mother’s son and she’s not on the meaty side either. So, it’s not really something I don’t know. Anyway, I answer whoever’s asking that I’m a walker. I walk everywhere. Even having a car, I still will walk half-an-hour to Main Street on a regular basis. I enjoy the coffee shops there. They’re cozy little establishments where you can grab a warm cup of pleasure. In the wintertime, I enjoy sitting in front of the window looking out to the traffic as folks slush their way through the snow.
I love this area.
Walking also provides me a time when I can think. So many wonderful ideas come from those one-hour sessions. I can’t say why certain thoughts come to mind whenever I’m outside stretching my legs. They just do. I go with it and see where they take me. On the opposite end of the spectrum, when I do take long walks, I tend to resolve quite a few problems that way. If something’s on my mind, by the time I get home it will have disappeared.
Another side effect of a good walk is crossing paths with the animal kingdom. I’ve mentioned this before in my Autumn Photography post. Have I told you my biggest fear? Well, I’ve met with raccoons, rabbits, foxes, wild dogs, black cats, ducks, and geese. That’s it. I think. Wait a minute, did I mention coyotes? I haven’t met a coyote yet, and I’m not planning to either. But my biggest fear is skunks. Thankfully, I’ve seen them, but never startled them enough to race down the street like an idiot. I wouldn’t know what to do if one sprayed me. I suppose that would be the basis for a bad day.
The stream by my house.
I’ve also encountered my share of incidents during my constitutionals. One in particular strikes my memory. It involved a car and an immovable object. I was walking home, listening to music, when right behind me on the opposite side of the street, a car veered off the road, bounced on the sidewalk, tracked through a couple of front lawns, took out a porch, a veranda and finally came to a stop with its front-right side embedded in a house. Yes, a house. Oh, everyone walked out of there alive. Yet, the whole scene shook me. To this day, I can still remember how it all happened.
I always wonder what my life would be like had that car veered in a different direction.
Nonetheless, I still walk everywhere. And I’ll probably keep walking until the end of my days. It’s what makes me who I am. It’s what keeps me alive.
[Author’s Note: I wrote this a month ago yet only now did I get a chance to post it. Hence the fall shots.]
Everyone has a routine before heading to bed. Mine? Mine is milk and cookies. I know how silly that sounds given I write about some of the most famished flesh eaters in Horror—zombies—but my sweet vice is none other than those tempting delicacies some of us have to avoid. Not me, if I’m shopping, it’s one of the first things on my list. And this is why I like Freedom Friday, because I can get away with telling y’all about my culinary temptations without worrying of judgment by the masses.
Chocolate Chip Cookies
I don’t know how this addiction started. The earliest memory I have is sitting at the table one bright summer morning eating breakfast only remembering my breakfast was milk and cookies. I love my mom for those happy memories. There’s more to the memory than simply devouring those sugary delights and washing them down with a tall glass of milk. I used to play a game.
How many remember Gilligan’s Island? Oh, you kids will now think I’m an ancient dude with a penchant for nostalgia. Well, yeah, but that’s beside the point. Gilligan’s Island kept me entertained in the early Seventies when coming home from school and I needed some time to wind down. Who am I kidding? I couldn’t wait to dump my books at the door, toss my shoes in the corner, and plant my butt in front of the TV for a good portion of the afternoon before dinner. The show belonged to a long roster of reruns I’d watched almost incessantly including The Beverly Hillbillies, Bewitched, The Brady Bunch, and Hogan’s Heroes. I remember those ones off the top of my head.
Anyway, getting back to Gilligan’s Island—in one episode the castaways had to face the prospect of the island sinking. Of course, being the kid I was, such a scenario fired my imagination to wonder what it’d be like to live on an island that was about to sink. Well, that imagination brought me right back to that early morning memory of my eating cookies for breakfast.
Gilligan’s Island Cast
Can you guess what I remembered? If you guessed I learned how to drive, which in turn inspired my Ranger Martin series, you are utterly wrong. I’m just checking to see if you’re keeping up with my story.
I’d have a big glass of milk in front of me, with a tall stack of chocolate chip cookies to the side. I’d grab a cookie and place it gently lying flat on the top of the milk. Then I’d imagine what it’d be like living on that island as the rushing waters penetrated every crevice and crag to engulf everyone on it, reminiscent of Gilligan’s Island.
I was a weird kid.
My sinking island scenario didn’t work very well with Oreo cookies, but I still had fun sucking the contents of the glass down my throat.
Here I am decades later, still eating milk and cookies before going to bed. I haven’t seen that island sink in a while, yet I’m sure one of these evenings I’ll grab a bag of Chips Ahoy! and go nuts.
Who knows, in the meantime, maybe I’ll even save a few lives from the voracious tidal waves swallowing the populace.
Having watched the Food Network for a full year made me appreciate the culinary delights of cooking with a few simple ingredients. No, this is not a zombie post. Nor is it a piece dedicated to strong chicks that kick butt. But this Freedom Friday entry is about a quick and easy recipe you can try at home with minimal to no chef experience. Yeah, that describes me, all right.
Curry Chicken
Real Jamaican curry chicken is hard to make. I know because some of my best friends are Jamaican and theirs is beyond description. Does the term “mouthwatering, savory dish” mean anything to you? It will be once you taste the real thing. Mine is a cheap imitation knock-off. But, as my kids have indicated several times, “Is this ever good.” It’s an ever-good, cheap imitation knock-off.
Okay, enough with the chitchat, let’s get to my recipe, as I know you’re dying to get started on it!
You will need chicken. I always get my chicken from Costco since they package their meats in affordable units. For instance, in my neighborhood, 24 skinless chicken thighs is about $24. I’m paying a buck a thigh. I think that’s a good deal. If you don’t have a Costco, you can try the regular supermarket, although I’m sure you’ll pay much more for the same package.
Once I get my chicken, I tend to soak 12 pieces in brine overnight. Not to make it complicated or anything, my brine is salt water. You can use a pot, which works well. Load the pot with the chicken thighs, add water, and add lots of salt. I can’t say how much salt. I go with what I’m used to—about ten dashes. How’s that for a scientific measuring system? Make sure the fridge is cold enough so as the chicken doesn’t spoil. I can’t stress enough how important it is to ensure food meets health and safety specifications.
Before going on, the reason for soaking the chicken in brine is to plump up the pieces. Ever wonder how restaurants get their chicken to look so huge? They soak them in brine to get the meat to swell at massive proportions. Nice trick, eh?
Next, set the chicken in a skillet/baking pan—your choice. We use a glass skillet in our house and it works fine for our family. If you have something else, that’s fine too. It’s nothing to get hung up about.
Raw skinless chicken thighs
Add your ingredients:
Cayenne
Curry powder
Garlic powder
Ginger powder
Onion powder
Pepper
Salt
Ingredients
And when I mean add your ingredients, I mean sprinkle to taste. You may only want to give a couple of dashes of cayenne, but pour on the curry. After all, it is curry chicken. Have a gander at the photo to get an idea of what it looks like before baking.
With ingredients
What you’ll want to do is set your oven to 375°F and cover the dish with aluminum foil. This will trap all the flavors inside the skillet to make the meat nice and tender when serving. Leave it in there for an hour and prepare the side dishes. I typically make peas or have some fries on the side. On this particular Saturday, my wife jumped in with some corn on the cob. It was goo-ood!
Covered
Once done, take the chicken from oven, let stand for about five minutes in order to allow it to absorb the juices from the skillet, then serve with side dishes.
Out of the oven
In the photo at the beginning of the post you see the curry chicken served with corn on the cob, marinated egg plant, and green beans. What a wonderful, delectable dish!
Enjoy!
RANGER MARTIN AND THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, on sale October 22.
Have you ever cooked Jamaican-style curry chicken? If so, how do you do it? Do you have any chicken recipes that have become a staple with your family?
Summer’s almost over. I know, I know. Where are the fanfares to send the kids back to school? All joking aside though, what I’ll miss the most from the hottest season of the year are the salads. Some may say BBQ, which is cool and all, but for me, a fresh salad with assorted ingredients makes my summer. I’m going to give you a few quick tips about salad preparation for Freedom Friday, and I hope your next experience with the delectable greenery is a delicious one!
Our feta, onions, cucumber salad, Apr. 2013.
Living in one of the most agriculturally diverse provinces in Canada, Ontario, our backyard has gone through various transformations throughout the years. When I say our backyard, I mean Casa Flacco’s backyard, as in, behind-our-house backyard. This year, we have made the most ambitious attempt at farming yet. In past years, we’ve had a small strip of land by the side of a fence dedicated to vegetables and salads. This year we’ve increased the size of the original and added two more sections, each section separated by green space.
I don’t know what it is with our backyard. Somehow, whatever we plant turns into these gianormous jungles we attempt to tame but bless us with a bounty of crops we never had intentions of growing.
At the beginning of the season, my wife asks, “What do you think we should grow this year?”
I typically answer, while flipping the channels, “I don’t know. Tomatoes would be good. Cucumbers. Salads. We have to have salads. Definitely have to have salads.”
That’s how it starts. Next thing you know, near the middle of the season, our salads look like leaves from the Cretaceous Period. Our tomatoes look like pumpkins that need trucks to transport. And our zucchinis like, well, I’m not sure. Take a look at the photo.
Zucchini plant in our garden, Aug. 2009.Zucchini from our garden, Aug. 2009.Tomato from our garden, Sep. 2008.
Seriously, sometimes I feel as if our yard has radioactive soil. If you ever hear reports of a man climbing buildings in Toronto and spinning webs, you’ll know what happened to me. Anyway, talk about getting caught up in the moment, let’s get back to the point of this post—salads.
We grow radicchio and the regular garden-variety salad. The radicchio is my favorite because it’s easy to prepare and mouth-watering on its own.
Here’s what we do:
Cut the leaves from the garden, plopping them in a pot or bowl, dirt, grime, slugs and all—yes, slugs
Take it into the house, wash the leaves thoroughly, getting rid of the slugs—you didn’t think we’d eat those things, did you?
Add some olive oil and salt
Munchtime!
Radicchio is a naturally bitter salad. The salt accentuates the flavor along with the olive oil. Fresh from the garden is something special to savor in the summer. Can’t be beat.
Now, as for the long-leaf salad, which is oh, so sweet and crunchy to the taste buds, the washing prep is pretty much the same as the radicchio. So, I’ll just give you the recipe we have year-round.
Ingredients:
A generous amount of crumpled feta cheese
Half a sweet white onion chopped
1 peeled and sliced cucumber
Olive oil
Salt
Directions:
Make sure you wash and dry the leaves properly. Invest in a good salad strainer; it makes life so much easier. Besides, leaves will not come out all soggy. You want them to crunch.
Add in your ingredients except the feta and olive oil.
Before serving, add your olive oil, toss the salad, then add your feta on top otherwise the feta becomes mushy and disappears in the salad as a nice white coat over the leaves.
And there you have it. Casa Flacco’s two salad recipes I’m sure you’ll enjoy trying before the summer’s over.
Buon appetito!
RANGER MARTIN AND THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, on sale October 22.
Do you have any salad recipes you’d like sharing? How about ingredients? What do you like putting in your salads?
Last week, my family and I took a much-needed vacation to Ottawa, Canada, the nation’s capital. This should not come as a surprise to my regular readers given how I’ve posted of our many adventures enjoying our love for travel. If you want to read some of those posts I’d written for my Freedom Friday series, you’ll get a taste of Nova Scotia, Niagara Falls, and our recent weekend getaway.
Parliament Hill, Ottawa, Canada
From our town, an hour north of Toronto, to Ottawa, it took four-and-a-half hours driving without stopping. Once we arrived, we checked out our very cool suite. I’m not sure if all hotels are as fancy as the one we chose in the downtown core, but our suite looked incredible. The elegance thrilled us with the handcrafted beds and embroidered blankets, marbled bathroom, and the useful kitchenette. We’d gone for a package deal, having added a set of tours to boot of the nation’s historical museums. We certainly didn’t have to wait to see the benefits of that decision.
Salmon sushi dinner in Ottawa
First off, let’s get one thing out of the way. It’s about the restaurants. Since food is a big part of our travel experience, we try to eat as much variety as we can. Apart from our kid’s ingesting their staple chicken fingers and French fries, my wife and I will dive into sushi, Greek food, and salads. There’s nothing quite like the taste of maki or souvlaki on a hot day in July. What I noticed about Ottawa’s restaurants however, is how upscale they are in elegance and design. I’m sure it has something to do with the affluence of a high percentage of the region’s population. Well, most are lawyers, senators and politicians. So yeah, the restaurants ought to service those folks in those professions. And the eateries’ decor will reflect that clientele. Nonetheless, no matter what the bistros and cafés look like, the food is delicious.
Ottawa’s also a culturally rich area filled with museums centered on Canada’s history. We took advantage of that history by hitting Parliament Hill as our first stop. Since our hotel was ten minutes away, we walked all the way. The heat was intense but the journey worth it. Seeing the hill for the first time was somewhat overwhelming. Its Gothic Revival architecture reflects an era when style and grace had epitomized the people’s preference for sophistication. The Peace Tower itself looks no different from Big Ben in London, England. It even plays chimes throughout the morning. I caught Somewhere Over the Rainbow in the midst of it all.
Centre Block, Parliament HillPeace Tower, Ottawa, CanadaCentre Block Archway
Our tour consisted of the House of Commons, the Senate, the Library of Parliament, and the Peace Tower, which are all part of the Centre Block. The most fascinating story is that of the great fire of 1916 that had devoured most of the Centre Block except for the Library of Parliament. A quick-thinking library clerk by the name of Michael MacCormac had shut the library’s iron doors preventing the spread of the fire, which would have consumed priceless books and paintings accumulated over a period of five decades. This small action taken by the clerk impressed me to remember his name and will possibly remain in my memory for a long time. I won’t forget his diligence as it has inspired me to keep pressing forward without relent in all my industry.
Besides enjoying sleeping in (lots of sleeping in), we took a trip to Canada Aviation and Space Museum. Seriously, Ottawa’s the center of museum country. To my family and I, who are avid museum aficionados, this was our territory. The museum houses a collection of some of the most impressive aircrafts that’d flown in the world. This says a lot given I’ve also been to the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.
Rather than tell you more of what we did during the week, I figure I’d let the photos tell the story instead. Therefore, below are highlights of our Canada Aviation and Space Museum trip.
HangarRCN 387 – HelicopterFighter JetCAF Rocket
One more museum trip I thought you’d like to have a gander at is that of the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, Quebec. We crossed province lines to the most visited museum in Canada to see what the big deal was. Wow! Big deal is right. The place is massive. It surpassed all my expectations. Not wanting to spoil it by my overdone descriptions, the highlight was our tour of an area in the museum featuring our country’s history. In the following photos, you’ll notice the twilight/sunset feel created by the exhibit’s indoor lighting.
Museum Totem PolesGlass ShopIndoor DisplayFurniture ShopIndoor SetAiding a Man’s Last Moments (dummys)Winter WindowThe View of Parliament Hill in Ottawa from Gatineau, Quebec
I had written a complete elaborate ending to this post, but decided to scrap it. You didn’t want to hear about the dark, foreboding storm we drove through on our way home. Of how it was two-thirty in the afternoon and the black clouds made it seem like ten at night. Of how I had my windshield wipers on max and I was screaming, “Bring it on” while my wife prayed for protection as buckets and buckets of water dumped on the road, stopping traffic to the side. You didn’t want to hear about that, did you?
RANGER MARTIN AND THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, on sale October 22.
Have you gone on vacation yet? Where did you go? What did you do? What do you like most about your vacation?
Looking to God 