Week 31 - Cucumber

The Week 31 challenge was announced as cucumber, and at first, I wasn't sure how that challenge was going to go in our household. Crunchy cucumbers are a bit of a choking hazard for babies, so even though we like eating cucumbers, especially in salads, we hadn't really bought any since we started doing family dinners with B. A was still working from home, so I thought about just making a cucumber onion salad for lunch, one that I hadn't made in over a decade. The other option was tzatziki, the only thing B had ever had with cucumbers before, since the grated cucumber there would be much easier for a beginning eater like B. But did tzatziki spotlight cucumber enough to work for the challenge? I decided that it was good enough for us, and picked out a recipe on Cookie + Kate that looked like a good place to start. 

Cucumber and dill too, but forgot to get a picture with those before I chopped them up

The ingredients for our adapted version of tzatziki were:

- 1 English long seedless cucumber ($1.79)
- 1.5 cups yogurt ($3)
- about 2 tbsp olive oil ($0.20)
- about 1/3 cup chopped dill ($1.33)
- a couple tsp lemon juice ($0.15)
- a few shakes of garlic powder ($0.05)
- one spoonful of jarred minced garlic ($0.10)
- a few grinds of salt ($0.02)

The cost for the tzatziki was about $6.64. It probably would have been about $1 less if we used 365 yogurt instead of Siggi's, but that's what was open at the time. We ate the tzatziki with carrots in a dill butter sauce (using up the rest of the dill), some turkey meatballs, and some Right Rice, so the total for dinner was probably about $12 (hard to calculate some of that stuff), right about average.

The steps for making the tzatziki were:

1. Wash and peel the cucumber.

2. Grate the cucumber on the large holes of a box grater. Put the grated cucumber into a colander sitting on top of a bowl, and let the cucumber drain while doing other prep work.

3. Wash the dill, pull off the fronds, and finely chop. [This step took way longer than planned, because our dill had already started to go bad a day after buying it.]

4. Squeeze out any remaining water from the cucumber. [The original recipe said to squeeze it out over the sink in a towel, but I tried that and our towel broke. So I just squeezed it out in my hands over the colander. I'm sure it wasn't completely dry or as dry as it could have been, but it worked just fine.]

5. In a large bowl, combine the cucumber, dill, yogurt, olive oil, lemon juice, garlic powder, minced garlic, and salt. Season to taste.

6. Let tzatziki sit for 5 minutes, taste again, and season if necessary. [I didn't add anything.]

7. Chill tzatziki until ready to eat. [Ours chilled for at least an hour and got even better.]

I really liked this version of tzatziki and would make it again. It was a great accompaniment for the meatballs, rice, and carrots, and also good on its own by the spoonful. A made some tzatziki for our Greek New Year's Eve feast back in 2017 with more garlic and no dill, and while he thought this version was good, he preferred the one he made. As a household, we're huge fans of tzatziki, so I would certainly not be opposed to trying as many versions as possible so we can refine a recipe of our own!