That Stuff That Comes Out of the Ground: Round 1- Cucumber

So I think mentioned before how I wanted to eventually become a vegetarian, however I am afraid to just jump into it because besides corn, green beans, and carrots, my knowledge of veggies isn't very vast. I've kind of made a little pact with myself to purchase a new kind of vegetable or green every time I go grocery shopping. This trip I landed on cucumbers.

I've had cucumbers before on sandwiches or in a salad, but I'm in more of a side-dish frame of mind for them. I found several recipes for cucumber salad and (lacking some key ingredients for each recipe I found) decided to give that a try.

What I used:

• Cucumber
• 1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
• 1 tbs vegetable oil
• couple shakes of dried dill weed
• salt & pepper
• then... a little water to dilute it because the vinegar smell was so strong

Then I just mixed everything together in a big bowl and let it marinade. Perhaps the marination part is where this dish lost me- it all just ended up tasting like regular ol' cucumbers. (I'm pretty sure the marination process is supposed to last longer than 30 minutes) Although it might have been the part where I diluted it. Ooops. 

Anyway, wasn't bad, wasn't great. Hindsight says I should have saved half the cucumber or gotten another one and tried a few different cooking techniques with it. Oh well, this was the first round after all. We'll do better next time! 

To go with the cucumbers we had delicious chicken parm tonight. There's nothing like crispy cheese. Mmmmmmmmm! 

Oh, and notice our tasty beverages. The one in the cutesy pink bottle was my boyfriend's.