Planting Cucumbers And A Picnic By The Sea

Monday afternoon was time for a spot more planting in the “huerta”. Our allotment got slightly neglected when we had to rush off to Oropesa to clear my flat out before it was sold. Because we had about one day’s notice from the estate agent, certain plants didn’t get the attention they deserved before we rushed off, mainly the cucumbers.

It’s been a funny year for lots of our fruit and vegetables. There’s an old saying in Spanish “en año bisiesto la cosecha cabe en un tiesto” which means in a leap year the harvest fits in a plant pot (quite amusing really). Basically things aren’t going to go as expected (do they ever) and the harvest won’t be as abundant as other years. Whether this is true or not I have no idea, all I know is that this year has been quite odd in terms of our veggies.

We think our cucumbers (pepinos) didn’t get the water they needed while we were away, the watering system was on but possibly not as long as it should have been. Whatever the case, the plants are certainly not what they were, the cucumbers taking on a sort of dry spongy texture with a slightly bitter taste, certainly not my cup of tea although the chickens find them rather tasty, nothing goes to waste here at least.

Pep, not wanting to be without cucumbers, planted some more seeds. The trouble is, they don’t seem to be sprouting as yet and he’s getting impatient. Off to the “cooperativa” we go to buy a few cucumber plants just in case. He doesn’t like doing this, preferring to grow things from seed and as organically as possible but on occasions, needs must. We can’t be without cucumbers, gazpacho just isn’t the same. Thankfully Pep’s brother has planted some in Pinos and has been supplying us with a few until we manage to harvest our own.

Depending where you get your info from, cucumbers seem to be one of the most difficult veggies to know where to plant. We googled it this year and it seems they can’t be planted with any other vegetable or melon. Different websites say different things but if you took it all into account, you basically have to buy a separate piece of land in the middle of nowhere just to be able to grow them away from everything else. Hence why we have them in one of the top plots with the fruit trees.

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But this time we decided to plant them in the bottom plot and ignore everything we’ve read, you have to take a risk every now and then! A lot of the melons will soon be fully grown so hopefully they won’t cross-pollinate. I’m afraid I don’t know enough about it really, but we’ll soon find out! If anyone has any advice, please let us know. We’ve never seemed to have any problems in previous years, 4 cucumber plants seem to give us more cucumbers than we know what to do with.

So off I go into the “huerta”, armed with my two metal rods to find 5 new spots away from those nasty magnetic fields. We planted the wee plants, put a couple of tiles over each one, surrounded them with dead weeds and the like and gave them a good watering. Hopefully we’ll have more luck with these ones, we’ll try not to neglect them this time!

Continuing in the “huerta”, we checked everything to make sure it was all ok, picking a few veggies that were ready to be harvested: tomatoes, Italian green peppers, the odd aubergine, “alficoces” or “ficossos” in Valenciano (long cucumbery things that are part of the melon family), carrots (zanahorias) and one or two cucumbers that seem to be ok now they’re getting the water they need. The plants still don’t look that great though, in fact they look pretty awful to me! We checked all the sprinklers on the watering system, an arduous task as there are quite a few but it needs doing every so often as they can get blocked up and you suddenly see the odd plant drying up in the heat. We also set the timers for longer now that the weather is warmer.

We’d decided earlier on in the day that we’d go for a picnic by the sea once it had cooled off a bit. There is a beach down on the Benissa coast that often gets used for this purpose, with tables and benches in a separate picnic area. But people also take their own tables and chairs and sit on the small promenade overlooking the sand and the Med. On weekends, it’s not unusual to see various families and friends picnicking, enjoying the warm summer nights with whatever culinary delights they’ve brought with them. But Mondays are more peaceful which we prefer.

I didn’t want to spend too much time in the kitchen preparing food so I settled on “Ensalada murciana” and boiled potatoes with a pesto style sauce. “Ensalada murciana” is a salad from Murcia (pretty obvious), made up of tomatoes, onions, egg, tuna, occasionally olives, salt and a horrendous amount of olive oil. The first time I had it was a few years back in a bar next to where they hold the San Javier Jazz Festival in the Murcia region. I was hooked. Every time we go back there it’s a ritual to go to the bar before the concerts start and have one of these salads. Unfortunately, like most festivals, this year it’s been cancelled. But at least I can make the salad at home while listening to a spot of music!

To prepare it you first need to peel the tomatoes, so to do this I cut a cross on the bottom of each tomato, put them in a pan of boiling water for one minute then plunge them into cold water. They peel super easily then. Once they’re peeled, chop them up into chunks and place in a bowl, along with some chopped onion (the amount depends on your taste, I used half a small onion this time, I don’t like too much), a can of tuna (I use “bonito”, I think that’s albacore tuna in English), a couple of hard-boiled eggs, a few olives, a couple of good pinches of salt and rather a lot of olive oil. Mix it all up and allow it to cool in the fridge till you’re ready to go on your picnic.

The potatoes I boiled, then allowed them to cool and mixed them with a quick dressing that I whizzed up in my mini smoothie blender. A couple of tablespoons of raw sunflower seeds, about 25 basil leaves (I adore this herb), 1 tablespoon of nutritional yeast, the juice of half a lemon, a large glug of olive oil and about the same amount of water plus some salt to taste. It’s sort of a pesto style dressing which is delicious poured on to the potatoes or any veg or salad for that matter. Today I did the same dressing for some green beans we harvested. Scrumptious!

We drove down to the beach around 8pm, a bit too early for dinner so we went for a stroll until hunger set in. There is a walk that runs along the Benissa coast right next to the sea, the “Paseo Ecológico”. It’s beautiful down there and on a Monday evening there are hardly any people about. We walked till we came to the Club Náutico Les Bassetes and then returned to the beach, ready for our picnic. Here is a link to a page explaining a bit about it. It’s all in Spanish though.
https://www.benissa.net/bd/archivos/archivo1305.pdf?nocache=0.524329&utm_source=valenciasecreta&utm_medium=post&utm_content=el-paseo-ecologico-de-benissa-ruta-a-pie-entre-calas-paradisiacas&utm_term=cta1

We set up our table after discussing for a few minutes where we wanted to eat (we never seem to agree on this!). I swear, all the money in the world couldn’t buy you anything better than sitting there eating, talking and enjoying the surroundings on a warm summer evening. There is a beach bar here where Pep plays most summers with a few of his musician friends. I have nothing against the bar, it’s very nice and in a very privileged spot but I’d sooner be sitting at my little picnic table eating the food we’ve grown and prepared ourselves. I’ll leave the bar for the tourists.

And that was our afternoon/evening. I can think of worse ways of spending a Monday, that’s for sure. Right, I best be off, this post is longer than I’d planned for it to be and I have loads to do before I make dinner. Thanks for reading (if you made it to the end!). As always, any questions or suggestions please feel free to write us a few lines, we’ll be pleased to hear from you. See you shortly. Take care. Love Georgie and Pep xxx