My Too Cool Cucumber

Finally! Some tasty tidbits from my garden. A cucumber is miraculously ready to eat.

This is a particularly monumental occasion for me. Though I religiously plant cucumbers every year, I am lucky if I get one little biddy cucumber from each vine before the sheer effort of producing said cucumber causes the vine to keel over, throw a tendril over its topmost leaf in a very dramatic fashion and then drop dead. And cut, that’s a wrap, let’s put this one in a box… no more cucumbers. Apparently, it is a bacterial beetle problem not a bad acting one.

And because I have so completely failed to grow a decent cucumber, I am driven to plant them every year.

It’s a gardener thing. Or maybe it’s an obsessive compulsive thing but as I have not yet found a good psychiatrist, I am going to blame it on the gardening.

The phrase “cool as a cucumber” is a pretty accurate one. The interior of a cucumber is 20°F cooler than the exterior temperaturee. This is due to the high content moisture inside them.

You really should not pick your cucumbers until you are ready to eat them. The same thing that keeps them cool will make them go bad within a day or so.

But Hanna, the cucumbers in the grocery store don’t do that. Well, no. They were dipped in wax to keep the moisture in. Do you want to spend your day making cucumber candles? Didn’t think so. Leave them on the vines till you are ready to eat them.

And by eating them, you will be putting yourself in the company of military greatness and presidential mediocrity. As noted in Campaigning with Grant, Ulysses S. Grant was a huge cucumber fan.

Looking for new and unusual cucumber uses?

How about cucumber sake cups? My girl, Martha, came up with that one.

Or you could make oldfashioned cucumber water, though I think the modern version would be better for your long term health.

So, when eating your cucumbers is this heat, remember the old saying…

Life is like a cucumber — one moment it’s in your hand, the next it’s up your ashhh…

Oh wait, I bet you thought I meant the other saying. Fooled you.