What I eat, apparently

I had briefly considered growing cucumbers this summer. It’s the first year ever since I’d moved out of my parents place some 10ish years ago that I’ve had a yard. Or rather, if you’re willing to define ‘yard’ as ‘lying 4 refrigerators on their sides, tracing the area, then covering that area with dirt plus a few trees plus the remnants of the past several decades worth of gardening remains by the people who’d rented the refrigerator-sized strips of dirt before me’. (Don’t worry, no refrigerators were harmed in the making of my yard.)

In any case, I strongly suspected that I might find myself awash in cucumbers by people who were actually capable of growing them. I was right. So, I found myself with 5 cucumbers. 5 delicious mutant cucumbers. I have to wonder how grocery store cucumbers always end up looking all symmetric and phallic and such, all so similar to each other. What happens to the gazillions of wacky looking cucumbers? All the ones that come out of real gardens, not the Great Cucumber Factory in the Sky the apparently supplies all of these freakish perfecto cucumbers to your and my local grocery stores?

So, what does one do with all of these cucumbers? Why, sunomono of course!

Sunomono is a delightful Japanese salad. The particular form above that I made consisted of me dumping some rice vinegar and sugar in a bowl, mixing, then adding sliced cucumber, a bit of seaweed, some sesame seeds, and stirring again. It’s quite good! It would go quite well with sushi, in fact. Alas, my meaningful and hinting glances at the Sushi Gods have been in vain as of late, so no sushi for me.

Other things you can do with cucumbers that don’t require too much effort:

-Goes well with pretty much any sort of salad.
-Pretend to be an upper class snooty person from the 1980s and make cucumber sandwiches.
-Eat them straight (they’re kinda like apples!) (dip in dressing as needed).
-Stick them in a regular sandwich of the ‘meat and cheese and lettuce and tomato’ variety.
-Garnish your ramen with chopped cucumber.
-Wear one down the front of your pants, in case of emergency.
-Hollow one out and make a flute.
-Dress one in miniature diapers and put it in a carriage.
-Two words: Bathtime Buddy
-Dip one in orange paint and try to convince a really drunk person that it’s a mutant Cheeto.
-If desperate, one could be used as a backup bladder.

And that, right there, is every single possible use for a cucumber. That’s right, folks, throw out your ‘Fun with Cucumbers’ books, because it’s a complete sham.