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Sour Cream Cucumber Salad

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Cucumber FreshSplash

The following recipe is from The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Eating Well on a Budget by Lucy Beale and Jessica Partridge, one of the cookbooks I’ve been recommending the most lately. What’s so wildly wonderful about this cookbook?

  • It’s filled with recipes you’ll actually make.
  • All of the recipes call for ingredients that are readily available AND inexpensive.
  • The recipes are healthy!
  • The cookbook, itself, is inexpensive.  Appropriate, given the subject matter, right?
  • Did I mention that they’re all recipes you’ll actually make?! As in again and again.

I’m wearing my copy of this cookbook out!

The recipe below is from page 177  (in chapter 12: Salads).  We’re having a good crop of cucumbers in our garden, so I’m always looking for different ways to use them.  We love cucumber and onions in vinegar, we love them in tossed salads and on cucumber sandwiches (Thinly sliced cucumbers on  bread that has been de-crusted and spread with cream cheese and sprinkled with either mint or chives), and my oldest daughter and I love sliced cucumbers in water. Fresh and delicious!

I’m making the following tonight to go with grilled chicken, broccoli & cheese, fried okra & squash, and three bean salad.

Sour Cream Cucumber Salad

1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 TBS dried dill
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
2 cucumbers, sliced
1/2 cup sliced white or sweet onions, optional

In a large bowl, combine sour cream, dill, salt, and pepper. Stir well.

Add cucumbers and onions. Toss gently to coat. Chill 1 hour before serving. The cucumbers and onions will wilt and become softer the longer you let them marinate in the dressing.

Recipe Credit: The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Eating Well on a Budget by Lucy Beale and Jessica Partridge.

Image Credit:
Cucumber FreshSplash Photographic Print from Allposters.com

Bottom of the Bag Chicken Recipe

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I’m adding a new category to the food blog called Eating on a Shoestring.  The economy pretty much insists that we cut back a little in different areas of our life, but culinary compromises usually aren’t very appetizing.  Or healthy.  I was inspired to create this category and try to focus a lot on economical meals and dining by a great cookbook I was sent to review, Eating Well on a Budget (click the link for my review).

Since this great cookbook inspired the category, I thought it only appropriate to get things rolling with a recipe from its pages.   This one’s from page 195 – just one of the many, many delicious, nutritious, and budget-friendly recipes in the book.

Here it is exactly as it appears in The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Eating Well on a Budget by Lucy Beale and Jessica Partridge.

Bottom of the Bag Chicken

Stop throwing away the crumbs at the bottom of a bag of whole-grain chips or crackers.  Turn them into a crunchy coating for oven-baked chicken strips.  Store crumbs in an airtight container until ready to use so they do not become stale.

1 lb. chicken breasts
1/2 cup crushed whole-grain chips or crackers
1 egg, beaten

  1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Rinse chicken breasts and cut into long 1-inch-wide strips. Set aside
  2. In a large bowl, crush chips or crackers. In a small bowl, beat egg.  Dip each chicken strip into egg and then into chip mixture.  Coat each piece well and place on a cookie sheet covered with parchment paper.
  3. Bake 15 minutes until crispy.  Cool slightly before serving.

Variation: Use white fish or salmon in place of the chicken.  Different chips and crackers produce amazingly different tastes.  Try flavors such as real Cheddar, sea salt, and vinegar coarse stone-ground wheat, or crunchy corn.

Tasty Tidbits: Serve chicken fingers with several different sauces to add variety to your meals.  Try honey mustard, salsa, or for a buffalo wing flavor, serve with sour cream and hot sauce.

Yield: 16 chicken strips (serves 8)

Each serving has only 135 calories and 89 mg sodium

Order The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Eating Well on a Budget by Lucy Beale and Jessica Partridge on Amazon.