So many Cucumbers! Oh My!

August is such as special time in Seattle.  There is SO MUCH fruit and veggies in season that  I often find myself at loss with how to preserve it or eat it all.  One of the most prolific veggies in my garden this year are cucumbers. 

This year I am growing 2 types of cucumbers (well, 3, but that bush is not producing much so it is dead to me)  First is Lemon cucumbers.  These get rave reviews because they are so unique looking and pretty, but I am almost more partial to dragon egg cucumbers! 

Lemon cucumber on the left Dragon egg on the right

Now, most often the way to preserve cucumbers is to pickle them, and I have spent a fair amount of time making soggy vinegary pickles, but this year, as I went through our cupboard and threw out 6 quarts of 3 year old pickles that we just never got around to eating, because they just taste plain icky, I decided to try something new...

What about cucumber jam? 

An internet search left me dissatisfied.  I found a few ideas on Pinterest, but alas they were in french...

So, I decided to come up with my own version of cucumber jam.  ( I have been making jams for... a few years, and feel like I have the basics down. )

First, I peeled the cucumbers. I feel like I could have scrubbed the spines off of the lemon cucumbers and skipped this step, but I had a vision...I wanted them peeled.

Then I tasted each cucumber before I put its slices into the food processor which was set to shread the cucumbers.

I did this because sometimes cucumbers, when the weather is just wrong, turn bitter...I get the impression that it is when it is too hot then too cool for the vegetables. Think 85 degree days, 60 degree nights.  Any way, I tossed the bitter cucumbers I found into the compost pile with out a second thought, and shredded the rest. 

I wound up with a Quart of shredded cucumbers, and so, I added 1 and 1/2 of a vanilla bean, the juice of a a lime and a lemon and stuck the entire thing in the refrige.  I needed to run errands, and this could wait... or marinate, which ever spin you choose.

After the baby went to bed, I steralized 12, 4 oz jars (10 minutes in boiling water), added 4 cups of water, a packet of Pectin (to make it gel)  to my cucumber mixture, and brought that to a boil.

When the jars were sterilized, I put my cucumber mixture into them (making 12, 4 oz jars) and processed everything for 12 minutes.  (processed = boiled again.)

My end jam tasted like... sweet cucumbers.  Kind of awesome, definitely a strange flavor.

I think this jam will play a role in several things I create in the winter when I look in the pantry and think "What is to eat?  What the heck do I do with cucumber jam?  Add it to stirfry?  or bagels? or cream cheese and crackers, or a special cocktail?"  Perhaps you will find a jar on your door step if I find myself at a loss.  If you throw a party, I will most certainly bring a jar.

You can let me know if I should stick to growing stuff.