one cucumber per meal

I am still wildly in love with our farmshare, despite moments of being overwhelmed. At one point a couple of weeks ago, I had upwards of 15 cucumbers in our crisper drawer. I called my mom for advice, and she suggested "just do what I do, and force yourself to eat one cucumber with every meal." I had no idea my mother ate so many cucumbers, but I love this anecdote because it reminds me how very alike my mom and I are in getting a kind of weird satisfaction from finding ways to use up produce... If I took this approach to my farmshare though, I think I'd have to eat one head of lettuce every day, plus two radishes, a green pepper, and a cucumber with breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Instead, I turned my small pickling cucumbers into delicious bread-and-butter refrigerator pickles!


Recipe: Slice one onion (into thin half-moons) and enough pickling or small cucumbers to fit tightly into a gallon's worth of small glass jars. Simmer together 4 cups of white vinegar, 4 cups of sugar, and 1/3 cup of plain salt to dissolve. Add 1 1/2 teaspoons each of mustard seeds, celery seeds, and turmeric (for color). Pour the liquid over the cucumbers to cover, seal, and refrigerate. They'll be ready in about 24 hours, and will keep for a long while in the refrigerator, staying crunchy for several weeks at least!

Other surpluses have been fun too, like the giant bag of apricots that became clafouti and finally apricot jam. I've never made jam before, and I didn't use any gelatin, just sugar and lemon juice, cooking the fruit until a glob on a cold plate (stashed in the freezer) seemed to have a jammy consistency. I think it's delicious, but should probably defer to my local friends, upon whom I've foisted little jars of the stuff (I didn't bother with canning it, so it's got a shorter refrigerator lifetime).


Recipe: Cook on medium low about a pound of sliced apricots with about 3 cups of sugar, 4 tablespoons lemon juice, the zest from one lemon, and a couple of tablespoons of water. If you do this in a pot that regulates heat well (like a Le Creuset or dutch oven), you can just stir occasionally, otherwise, you might need to stir more regularly. Cook for about an hour and a half, until the fruit breaks down, the color deepens, and the jam thickens. When it coats the back of a spoon, place a dollop on a plate that you've stashed in the freezer and see if it runs. When the cooled jam on the plate seems about the consistency you'd like, pour the jam into little glass jars, allow to come to room temperature, then seal and refrigerate.

We're going to miss our farmshare while we're in Maine for September, but I'm sure the Greenaways will enjoy it as much as we have - and with a few more mouths to feed in their household, they hopefully won't be as overwhelmed as we have been at times! Here's a few weeks worth of pictures - I like seeing how the harvest progresses from week to week...