Cool As A Cucumber...at 103 degrees?????

Woody harvested 22 cucumbers today! And, this is what is left of them (and, there are a lot more in this large bowl than meets the camera's eye) after I cooked with cucumbers for a good part of the day. Woody got up early this morning and went on a five mile walk (in this heat this is the only good time of day to exercise...the TV weatherman just said that they expect to break a record high low temperature overnight in Huntsville (if that makes sense!)). Woody did do a little work in the yard and in the gardens. He also ran a couple of errands today. I have worked on trying to use up some of the cucumbers. First I made our supper...Vegetable Salsa with Rotini...one of our favorite summer pasta salads...it has corn, cucumbers, tomatoes, black olives, and Italian salad dressing...all tossed with the rotini pasta...with a shake of Parmesan cheese on each serving...very refreshing on such a hot day. I put that in the refrigerator to get good and cold for tonight's supper and then got started on making some more pickles! I am not a canner...so the pickle recipes that I am making are for refrigerator pickles. The first recipe that I made was Sweet Pickle Relish (and it actually looks like sweet pickle relish!). Looking forward to tasting it after it gets good and cold. Then on to a dill pickle recipe...I had fun scouring the internet for refrigerator pickle recipes this morning (there's lots out there!). The dill pickle recipe that we decided to try is "Crazy Dill Refrigerator Pickles." I guess crazy is in the name as they don't just have cucumbers in them, but also green peppers, onions, and celery. We used cucumbers and green peppers from Nathan and family's garden and then dill and garlic from ours. These will be ready to eat in two to three days. Looking forward to tasting them...hope that they are good. So we now have Crazy Dill pickles, refrigerator bread and butter pickles, and sweet pickle relish in our refrigerator. Soon we will turn into pickles!

It was a good day to stay indoors and try to keep cool...the outside temps hit 103 degrees...which is pretty bad...but around here you also have to figure in the heat index/feels-like temperature and today it has been as high as 114. Our area is under a heat advisory. I haven't even stepped outside today.

Woody is at Monday night prayer meeting at church and I'm on my way to put up my feet for a while and try to stay as cool as a cucumber!