Cool Hand Cuke

The cucumber crop from Our Maker's Acres Family Farm is coming to a close after a very prolific season.  We plant two varieties - Boston Pickling Cucumbers and Suyo Long Cucumbers.  I like them both.  They climb on a trellis in the back part of the garden.  We have been eating cucumbers every day for weeks and weeks.

We eat them many different ways.  So far this year, we haven't made pickles like dill pickles or bread and butter pickles.  Tricia made her traditional Lacto-Fermented pickles, though.  She slices up the cukes, puts them in a quart jar, adds 4 tablespoons of whey (a by-product she gets when making kefir), 1 tablespoon kosher salt and adds water to fill the jar.  Then she'll sit the jars out for two days and then refrigerates them.  They'll last for quite a while.  The lacto-fermented pickles are crispy and salty.

I have to admit that I like dill pickles, but Tricia has never been a big cucumber-eater.  However, with the lacto-fermented pickles, she really enjoys them.

Another way that we enjoy eating them is in a fresh cucumber salad.  It is so cool and refreshing!  We dice up cucumbers fresh from the garden, slice up some purple onions that we just harvested, add some cut up homegrown tomatoes we just picked and toss in some blueberries from our bushes.  Finally, drizzle vinegar and oil over the top and add sea salt and cracked black pepper.  Allow to chill and you have a fantastic salad!

It's just not summer without a nice cucumber salad!

Once we polish off the last of the cukes this summer, I'll try to get a fall crop planted in late August so that we can enjoy a few more salads.  Perhaps we'll re-stock the pantry with more dill pickles with the Fall Crop.