Hot summer ended, temperature has been ramping down and so is the production of my Dad's home grown Japanese cucumber from his backyard. For a period of time we eat cucumber everyday, that's how crazy it gets, when they grow, they go off the roof! Naturally I took one and pureed it to soap. Cucumber doesn't have a lot of juice, and I don't want to use all the pulp nor do I want to cook it first before puree. Some people cook the vegetable before soaping. Personally I think that kills some of the nutrients, so I prefer and always soap vegetable (or fruit) raw. This soap I pureed the home grown cucumber with coconut water. The liquid came out a very beautiful dark green from the peel, but sadly I don't think that green would survive the saponification. I used cheese cloth and filtered out most of the pulp, left some in for texture.
The beautiful greens you are seeing? They are colorants I added knowing the natural green from the cucumber peel would disappear in soap. See those green spots through out the soap? That's the pulp. I thought I would like the texture, but I keep on thinking it's pimples! Next time I'll totally filter out the pulp and use juice only.
