A vodka experiment

... recipe posted for posterity, so I can tweak it later, because I'm sure I'll lose it if I write it down on paper.

Cucumber-infused vodka
1 blue triangle of vodka (750 mL of Taaka Platinum)
~1/2 of a large cucumber -- 2-3 inches worth of slices when put into an old mayonnaise jar
juice of half a lime, plus whatever pulp I could scrape out of the strainer
about 1 tablespoon of regular sugar.

Put the whole lot in the old mayonnaise jar (big-size Best Foods jar) and stir it up. Give it a couple of shakes to make sure it's all mixed.

I'm going to let it sit for a few days and then check on it. I don't know if the proportions are at all correct. I guess we'll find out.

Please post any cucumber vodka recipes you might have!

From the depths of Lauren's brain, part 1: Potato salad with green beans.

For some reason today I am having a hard time remembering not to spell it "green beens."

Veggie box this week was scheduled to contain a mess of cucumbers and other things of which we already have a surplus. I took them off the list and then to balance it back out I asked for two bags of fingerling potatoes and two bags of green beans, instead of just one of each. Then the box arrived and I realized I had no idea what to with those potatoes.
(We can easily dispose of the green beans, with garlic, olive oil, white wine, & finished with butter -- G. could subsist on that I think.)

So I was pondering the potatoes, and the hot weather, and the hiking trip with some vegans tomorrow, and somewhere from my subconscious arose:

Cold potato salad with green beans
Salad
Fingerling potatoes (2.5 lbs, according to veggie box receipt)
green beans (.5 lb, per receipt)
shallot (about half a large-ish one), finely diced

Other
Olives. Kalamata is what I had on hand; niçoise would have been better, of course. I just used four because G. doesn't like them much.
And the only reason I used them at all, instead of just putting good-quality anchovies in the dressing, is that we are going hiking with vegans this weekend, and I was hoping to share. So I'm using olives in the salad to try to replicate the depth and that unnameable thing that gets better when you let it sit for a day. (You know, that thing that soups and chunky salads with dressing do?)

Dressing
1 part white balsamic
1 part regular (dark? brown?) balsamic
2-3 parts 0live oil
(minced anchovy, if you aren't feeding it to vegans)



Clean and trim potatoes & beans.
Put potatoes in cold water and bring to a boil. Keep an eye on them (fingerlings are small!) and remove as soon as they are fork-tender. Put in cold water to stop the cooking.
Boil a smaller pot for the beans, which can go in when the water is boiling. Check them regularly as well, and remove as soon as they are tender but still crisp. Put them in ice water.
Chop olives into whatever size your eating partners prefer. I made mine small so that they would impart a lot of flavor but so that if G. ate one accidentally he might not even notice.
When potatoes are cool, slice into rounds. If you are using bigger potatoes, halve or quarter the rounds, or use chunks instead.

Mix it all up! Potato rounds, beans, olives, shallots. Add dressing and salt and pepper. Eat some now and save some for later, when it will taste much better.