Summer Festis back for its 3rd year! And we’re happy to be participating again thanks to Margaret Roach and Deb Puchalla, the creators of Summer Fest.

This great annual cross-blog event celebrates the peak harvest season where we all share recipes or growing tips for all our harvest fresh ingredients and produce. Everyone is encouraged to participate by sharing a recipe or tip each Wednesday’s specific theme the the event ends.

Summer fest is a community celebration of shared cooking and gardening tips. All you have to do is contribute a post based on the weekly theme and share your links on all the host bloggers who are collaborating in Summer Fest. If you don’t have a full post, you share your comments too! Leaving your link will allow everyone in the Summer Fest community to feast on your creations.

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For complete Summer Fest information & schedule, visit Maragaret at Away to Garden.

This week’s theme is “Cukes and Zukes”, perfect veggies to launch Summer Fest of cucumber and zucchini recipes. Our garden cucumbers this year are slightly *better* than last year, but still they’re struggling a bit. The leaves seem to die off and brown rather quickly, but they’re flowering well. What does make to fruit results in such crunchy and fresh cucumbers! If anyone has any advice about our browning leaves, we’d love to hear from you. So what we have been able to collect this year have been wonderful and to count, we harvested seven cucumbers! Five more than last year!

Cucumbers are so fresh, crispy and refreshing. Our house is rarely ever without cucumbers because they add the perfect crunch and texture to last minute salads, sandwiches and rice paper spring rolls . We’re testing some new recipes for upcoming garden parties and decided to play with a batch of stuffed cucumbers. They’re so perfect for parties and make great bite sized appetizers. The filling for the stuffed cucumbers that we came up with has sour cream instead of cream cheese because we wanted something light and tangy. Season these cute little bites of crunchy freshness with extra paprika for added color and smoky bite. You and your guests will be quite pleased with these at your next gathering. You can’t eat just one of these addicting stuffed cucumbers. Make sure you have about 2-3 per guest!