These cucumber bites make a great appetizer or side on a lunch platter.
4 servings
90 calories per serving
1/2 c shredded carrot
1/2 c 1/4 less fat Philadelphia Cream Cheese with Chive and Onions
2 cucumbers
Keep 2 T of carrots aside for garnish. Mix the rest of the carrots and cream cheese. Cut cucumber in half lengthwise and scoop out seeds. Place cheese mix in cucumbers. Cut each half into 5 pieces. Top each piece with leftover carrots.
I usually have couscous heated but this salad is served cooled or chilled and it is a new and different flavor experience. Couscous is just a tiny pasta, almost like pastina. And you can find it boxed and usually in with the rices and rice mixes at your grocery store. Give it a try for something different !
(I just noticed that with all my couscous recipes, I photograph it in the same dish…what’s with that? hehehe I guess it’s THE couscous star.)
4 servings
131 calories per serving
1/2 c whole wheat couscous
1/2 c boiling water
1 c canned diced tomatoes
1/2 c diced English cucumber
1 T fresh oregano, chopped
1 T fresh parsley, chopped
1 T fresh basil, chopped
2 T red wine vinegar
4 t extra virgin olive oil
1/4 t salt
1/4 t freshly ground pepper
Combine couscous and water in large mixing bowl and let sit until water is absorbed. Mix together vinegar, salt and pepper and oil. When couscous is cool, fluff with a fork and add the remaining ingredients and toss to combine. Serve as is or chill for a bit before serving.
Cucumbers come in many varieties – but the 3 I find most often in the food markets and the 3 I use most often in my cooking are:
1. Kirby Cucumber
2. Common / Garden / Slicing Cucumber
3. English Cucumber
They are all a bit different and here I’ll explain some of those differences.
1. The Kirby Cucumber is the cucumber of choice for making pickles (here is a great quick pickle recipe). They have a thin skin and have a firmer flesh than a garden cucumber.
2. The Garden Cucumber is your regular, every day cucumber – they have a thicker, waxy, dark green skin which tends to be bitter and they have lots of seeds – I often remove the seeds by taking a spoon and scraping down the center to remove them.
3. English Cucumbers are long and thin, and my market wraps them in plastic. The skin is grooved and bumpy but not bitter. They are sometimes called seedless but really it is just that the seeds are very small. The one pictured here actually has larger seeds than usual, but I have had some with just about zero seeds. They have crisper flesh then the Garden Cucumber.
Often I use English and Kirby cucumbers interchangeably though I often opt for English for salads and Kirbys for cut up spears – – no idea why, but in my head it belongs that way 🙂 And I find myself using Garden cucumbers more and more infrequently, probably because of the consistency – I like the crisper flesh of the English and Kirby.
Often times the best thing about a salad is not the lettuce, but all the other stuff ! And this salad agrees 🙂 No lettuce – – just all the good veggies in a great lemony dressing. If you have extra broccoli, throw it in. If you are out of celery, don’t’ sweat it ! Make this salad anything you want 🙂
4 servings
82 calories per serving
1 yellow bell pepper thinly sliced
1 large cucumber, peeled and thinly sliced
2 stalks celery, diced
2 large carrots, shredded or sliced
6 radishes, sliced
1 T chopped parsley
2 T lemon juice
1 T oil
½ t garlic powder
Salt and pepper to taste
Toss tomato, cucumber, celery, carrots, radishes and parsley. Combine juice, oil, salt, pepper and garlic and mix well and then pour over salad and serve immediately.
This is my ‘recipe’ for a salad that contains ‘everything but the kitchen sink’. Sometimes it’s the best unplanned dish of the week.
By the end of the week I have a bunch of bits and pieces of veggies left over – so I use them all in a salad – whatever I have, it gets thrown in. And because the salad is so full of flavor from all the veggies, I use NO OIL. And that makes for one LOW CAL, LOW FAT salad !
Sometimes I even put in bits of other prepared salads I had made – this picture shows a salad where I added in some left over cucumber and radish salad – and even some black beans. Try it – it makes salad eating so much more pleasurable !
1 serving
30-80 calories per serving
2 c field greens or any other leftover lettuce you have
Salt and pepper to taste
1/2 t garlic powder
1/4 t onion powder
1/4 t oregano flakes
Vinegar (balsamic, red wine, anything)
Citrus juice – up to a tablespoon of lime juice, lemon juice, orange juice – whatever floats your boat
1 c Veggies – cucs, broccoli, carrots, celery, jicama, zucchini
1/4 c Beans – black beans, chick peas, cannellini beans
1/4 c Fresh herbs – parsley, cilantro, basil
Mix it all up and enjoy !
Cucumbers done in a white vinegar dressing is a dish in many cultures…they are just meant to be paired. At only 20 calories per serving, this zesty side salad is a definite ‘go-to’ recipe of mine !
4 servings
20 calories per serving
2 cucumbers
½ onion, sliced thin (try red onions for their mellower flavor)
½ c white vinegar
Salt and pepper to taste
Peel the cucumbers and then slice in half lengthwise. Using a spoon, scoop out the seeds (or use English cucumbers which are pretty much seedless) and then slice very thin. Place in a bowl with the rest of the ingredients and let marinate in the refrigerator at least one hour.
A little chicken, lotsa vegetables and lotsa flavor !
6 servings
289 calories per serving
2 c chopped cooked chicken breast
2/3 c thinly sliced red bell pepper
½ c thinly sliced English cucumbers
1/2 c sliced celery
1/2 c light ranch dressing
1/4 c crumbed goat cheese
4 c chopped romaine lettuce
6 8-inch fat free flour tortillas
Layer all the ingredients in tortillas, wrap and secure with a toothpick. Here’s my instructional video in how to secure a wrap so nothing leaks out the bottom.
Savor the Thyme and Tangled Noodle are hosting a fun filled challenge, “Eating Your Words”, and I’ve decided to enter. We basically just had to use food to spell out an idea.
I had read about their challenge and then was going about my day and was thinking about what I might submit. I was getting ready to make my salad when it hit me…carved cucumbers. So here’s my entry – and remember, eat your veggies !
Thanks for the fun, guys 🙂
Hummus is simply a dip made from chickpeas. Many hummus recipes also use tahini, which is just a paste of oil and ground up sesame seeds. Many of the store-bought hummus dips are downright delicious – all the different brands have different consistencies so sample a few and find the one you like. Some are creamier, some are grittier, and some are more spicy than others– and if you can’t find one you like, make your own !
1 serving
130 calories per serving
½ cucumber, sliced into spears
1 stalk celery, sliced into spears
4 T hummus (roasted red pepper flavor is my favorite)
These make a great appetizer or side on a lunch platter.
6 servings
50 calories per serving
1 English cucumber, peeled (if you use a regular cucumber, be sure to scoop out the seeds)
1/4 c Philadelphia 1/3 less fat cream cheese, chive and onion flavor
Fresh dill sprigs (optional)
12 little strips sundried tomatoes (blot off oil)
Cut cucumber into 12 slices. Scoop out a bit if the middle of each to make a little ‘cup’ to hold the cheese. Fill each with cheese. Top each with a sprig of dill and a strip of sundried tomato.
