7 REASONS WHY CUCUMBERS SUCK..

Mark my words, this funky cucumber will not be smiling by the time I'm finished with him...

1. First has got to be the smell. That rank greener than green, so called fresh smell - and before you start saying they don't really smell of much, you're wrong, they do smell and the smell is a strong one. Alright.  So, smell is my number 1 gripe with these vegetalia.

2. On a culinary basis, what are they actually good for beyond decoration material? How many cucumber goulash recipes do you see?  How many curries have cucumber at their heart?  Ever had cucumber in bread instead of walnuts or tasty seeds?  No, I didn't think so.  And what's more, they're not even a great item to decorate with!

Here this chef has ingeniously tried to make the cucumber more interesting

by boring a hole in it before reverting to that age old tradition of slicing
And it still looks naff...

3. Linked to the last reason is the consistency of cucumber.  What is it? Liquid or solid?  I've scoured the web's scientific resources only to draw a blank. Mush is my conclusion. Pure mush in the mouth.  Ask yourself, why would you want to introduce such a sensation to your mouth's most wondrously subtle taste buds?

4. The third reason is probably the source of most people's disliking to the bumpy green things. Anyone over a certain age (I'd say around 30 or so) only has childhood memories of salads as cucumbers cut in thin slices and served with putrid one-variety lettuce (whose latin name is probably boringa non-tasti lettuca) with a few tomatoes sliced in the same way on a plate.  Anyone younger than that age will tell you quite plainly, THAT'S NOT A SALAD!!  And so my childhood memories of thoroughly crap salad have been compounded and my anger clearly focused on the cucumber element. I HATE THEM!

Yet more thinly sliced bundles of puke. This time cleverly mixed with lumps of tomato
and called a Cucumato Salad! (exclamation mark part of the recipe, not my addition)
Doesn't it look delicious?

5. Beyond their near-uselessness, foul consistency and tendency to (still) crop up as thin slices in a poor excuse for a salad at small sandwich bars, local pubs serving "traditional home made food", your grandma's Sunday tea and any other place that hasn't dragged itself into the 21st century of culinaria (at least Grandma has an excuse, she smells worse than the f'ing cucumber), they taste odd.  Not odd in the "mmm... interesting, I'll have another try" way, just odd in the "get that thing as far away from me as possible" way.

6. In these days of children running amock with knives stabbing their way through half the High School population (what was that? you say you don't believe the stories in the NOTW or The Sun?) one must also consider the worth of anything in your house for home security purposes.  Here the cucumber truly sucks.  Try hitting something with one.  In a personal combat situation they snap all too easily for my liking.

7. The latin name is Cucumis Sativus.  Whoever heard of such a stupid name.  Moreover, in other European languages it's nothing sexy either, limited to variants of concombre or gurke basically. Even the Germans, who have a habit of making some crazy long-winded, difficult to pronounce words out of foodstuffs, simply use the boring gurke. Just boring.

[STOP PRESS: I may have found one use for the cucumber. I play a lot of Scrabble and the letters that make up cucumber add to a reasonable 16-point score - more on a double/triple letter/word place obviously.  Not the best of eight letter scores but pretty good for a vegetable. I will give it that at least]

However, in summary...

DEATH TO ALL CUCUMBERS!