Over the last few years we’ve become increasingly better at storing and saving produce we grew at home and even stuff we bought while it was in season. Surprisingly we ended up with about a dozen lemon cucumber plants this year that in a flurry of growth, took over much of the backyard. We’ve had lemon cucumber vines trailing across the back fence, climbing a prickly pyracantha bush as it reached toward the sky and meandering throughout three different flowerbeds.
We never anticipated we’d have this many lemon cucumber plants. Last year’s lone vine didn’t fair too well, setting a couple small cucumbers before withering to unrecognizable remnants. With only a scant amount of seeds left in our seed box, I ended up planting them in seed trays but forgot what they were. We’ve had a lot of unknown plants this year and another round of John Does didn’t concern us at all. My wife set them about knowing we’d soon figure out what they were.
Two months later we’ve picked several baskets of delightful lemon cucumber. My Homestead Hottie wife has loved the lemon cucumber ever since we were first introduced to them at the Farmer’s Market in our old hometown of Flagstaff, Arizona. We slice them and eat them raw or mix them in with salad when we need a nourishing cool-down from Summer’s oppressive heat. But with the amount we’ve harvested, there was simply no way we’d be able to eat them all before they went bad.
I wasn’t convinced they were able to be pickled but Homestead Hottie quickly found a canning recipe online that proved they were in fact a candidate for pickling. Jill over at Jillicious Discoveries has a great recipe that we put to use this last week. Our four quart jars of lemon cucumber pickles are now resting quietly beside their cousins, four jars of freshly preserved tomatoes, on the shelves in the garage. I can’t wait to try them out. Winnie Abramson over at the Healthy Green Kitchen also has a recipe for lacto-fermented lemon cucumber pickles that I’d be interested in trying as well.
Do you have a favorite recipe for lemon cucumbers or a favorite pickling recipe to use them in? Let me know, I’d love to try more!
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