Cucumber is so much more than a tea-time British delicacy, served on white bread with loads of butter, yet Americans cringe at the thought! Cringing Cucumber, as she is known in the States, decided to open a specialty shop in the heart of Manhattan, serving all manner of crustless delights, aka sandwiches, including fig and pepper, baked wasp with Madagascar honey, watercress and mustard, sardines on toast, and her personal favorite, singed caterpillar butts on sourdough. Needless to say, the café, which was called The Last Great Cucumber Lodge, did not catch on immediately.

Fellow restaurateurs including The Lavender Mustache and The Turquoise Amoeba suggested altering the menu to include more traditional fare like ham on rye, or the tried and true turkey club, but the recalcitrant cucumber would not budge. Instead, she dug her heels in, determined to win over The Big Apple with the succulent taste of squid toes on pumpernickel. Manhattanites were not amused and even went so far as to protest, marching around in front of the great establishment carrying signs with sentiments like “Grasshopper legs are bollocks!” and “If I wanted a crustless delight, my husband will do just fine!”

Poor Cringing Cucumber redoubled her efforts in the hope of winning over the humorless Americans. She concocted new, ever more adventurous delights that included boar’s whiskers dipped in camembert and peanut butter, an all-American favorite; cream of ant on braised celery stalks, and boar’s ball biscuits with hemp seeds, lightly dusted with cinnamon and sage. Again, the response was a collective gasp, so Cringing Cucumber had no choice but to take early retirement back in Sussex where she spent the remaining years of her life delightfully churning butter in the nude with other likeminded women, and you can bet she most definitely lived happily ever after.

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  • Claude Monet, Waterlilies and Japanese Bridge, 1899

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