Cucumbers

OK, OK its just a bag of solid water that gets sliced onto every lunch plate in the country, and then gets left on that plate, and then it gets binned - correct? Just like its fatter Autumn counterpart, the plumpkin, there are an awful lot of cucumbers that get grown and then wasted and I don't know how we have arrived here.

If you taste a homegrown cucumber fresh from the early morning warmth of the greenhouse it is incomparable to the tasteless, flabby slices that appear on every sandwich/burger/salad plate in the land. I get that no-one wants to eat it and why it ends up in the bin. Even my chickens won't eat a bought cucumber. One cut fresh from the vine though, sliced lengthways with tiny doplets of cucumber juice glistening on the surface is a different matter. They extract all of the seeds from the middle before plunging their beaks into the cool flesh which is very refreshing for them. ( I am constantly amazed at just how much they can eat using the quite restrictive tool of a beak!)

Like tomatoes and strawberries cucumbers are easy to grow in a pot in a warm spot and will provide an abundance of fruits over quite a long period of time. So find your pot and plant a seed. You won't regret it.

Salad servings apart there is so much more to cucumbers, such valuable properties and so many ways of using and preserving them. Join me on a journey of exploration . . . .

Our Workshops are friendly, no experience of cooking or preserving is necessary and we try to use everyday, familiar equipment. You can cook along with the Live Workshop or use the recording which will be place in The Library of the School soon after the Workshop finishes

So, take advantage of the block booking discounts to access all of the Season's Workshops with the security of knowing you won't miss anything.

We look forward to meeting you and welcoming you to our preserving family

Rosie x