Celery salt and mustard, a tomato and green pepper, plus crumbled bacon, all add flavor to a cream cheese topping you can serve atop slices of cucumber for a summery appetizer.
Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader
Those who tried it, liked it
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That U-shaped cucumber was so large, I figured it would count for two regular size cucumbers. Other ingredients include mustard, a tomato, a green pepper, bacon slices, celery salt and a slab of cream cheese.
Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader
“You hit another homer,” columnist and Times Leader taste tester Bill O’Boyle said as he sampled an appetizer that featured tomatoes, peppers, cream cheese and bacon on top of a fresh cucumber slice. “Very good.”
“It’s a good mix of sweet and savory ingredients,” Mark said at home. “And the coolness of the cucumber makes it very refreshing.”
“I like it,” said Rebecca Belch from the Times Leader pre-press department. “And it seems healthy.”
Well, with all those veggies, I would say this appetizer has to be healthier than, oh, let’s say, an appetizer I once encountered that consisted simply of Lebanon bologna wrapped around bite-size pieces of cream cheese. Even though it tasted good, in a fat-on-fat, indulgent kind of way, it was something I wouldn’t recommend eating every day.
As for this recipe, especially if you put just a little topping on a thick slice of cucumber, it probably could be part of your daily summer diet.
I say “summer” because it’s nice to use fresh veggies now that they’re available; in fact it was page designer Lyndsay Bartos’ recent gift of a large, fresh-from-the-garden cucumber that inspired me to search for a recipe where I could use it.
This recipe came from amish365.com, the website that also is home to the Amish Cook column, and I liked the finished product more than I thought I would.
But, alas, it was not easy to find taste testers willing to try it, at least not in the newsroom, where one person doesn’t like mustard, and another doesn’t care for tomatoes or peppers. Yet another co-worker said she’s lactose intolerant, so she was wary of the cream cheese and declined a sample.
In the event you’re OK with the ingredients, I invite you to give it a try. It’s not at all difficult to make.
Tomato Bacon Spread on Cucumber Slices
2 cucumbers, peeled and sliced
8-ounce package cream cheese
2 teaspoons prepared mustard
1 ½ teaspoon celery seed
1 medium tomato (take out seeds and chop fine)
1 ½ cup chopped green pepper
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
8 slices of bacon, fried and crumbled
In a bowl, combine cream cheese, mustard, and celery seed until well-blended. Add everything else and stir. Refrigerate for one hour or more.
Add a teaspoon or two to the center of a cucumber slice.
