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The mystery of the missing cucumber.
Jan. 12th, 2011 10:18 amOne thing I've learned over the last twelve months is why people like supermodels and vegetarians always seem to be so chippy: it's because they're so damn hungry pretty much all the time. You see, as the recession ticked along and everyone was looking for ways to save a bob or two, I had the bright idea of starting to make myself a salad for work lunch. I'm fairly parsimonious at the best of times so I'd been making myself sandwiches for years rather than go to the local sandwich shop and pay through the nose for the same product, but the ones I made had been up until that point crammed with tasty - but alas, quite pricey - ingredients like chorizo and gruyiere. As I started to feel a bit skint I started to look speculatively at the greenery counter at the market and thinking I say, those vegetable things look cheap. Nothing like as expensive as this air-cured spanish chorizo, for example. Hey, that gives me an idea!
And so it was that I ended up rolling into work with a tupperware container full of things like carrots and spending my lunchtime crunching loudly. For a while the pleasure of spending even less cash outweighed all other considerations, but after a while something began to dawn on me. If I have a salad for lunch, then by the end of the day - even more so if I went to the gym on the way home from work - I am naggingly, gnawingly, grindingly hungry. My body cries out for protein. I look speculatively at my fingers and wonder how flavoursome they'd be and if I'd really miss one or two of them. Even Burger King would sometimes start appearing as an attractive prospect, assuming I'd run out of fingers first. I honestly don't know how sausage-dodgers do it. I get home at the end of the day and flop face-first into a plate of beef stew because if I didn't I wouldn't give next door's baby ten minutes if they left it unattended.
Anyway, this morning I leapt from my repose like a gazelle (as usual) and scampered into the kitchen to slice my meat-free luncheon. I popped open the fridge and took out carrots, check, tomatoes, check, cucumber...
Cucumber?
Cucumber. You know, big green thing. Suggestively shaped. I know I had one. I ate some of it yesterday.
I rummaged through the fridge, but against all reason or sense, I was shy one cucumber.
You'd think that it'd be difficult to mislay a large vegetable in an area as small as a fridge, but somehow I managed it. I know I had one. It was there yesterday. I know there's a whole lot of possible places I might have stuck a cucumber, but very few places I could stick one and then forget about it. So now I'm confused. 24 hours ago, I had a cucumber in my fridge. Now I don't. Could I have been sleep-eating? I certainly didn't have any dreams about eating a large cucumber-shaped biscuit, so that seems unlikely. Or perhaps the phanton cucumber thief of old London town has struck? Whatever else, it's certainly a mystery.
And so it was that I ended up rolling into work with a tupperware container full of things like carrots and spending my lunchtime crunching loudly. For a while the pleasure of spending even less cash outweighed all other considerations, but after a while something began to dawn on me. If I have a salad for lunch, then by the end of the day - even more so if I went to the gym on the way home from work - I am naggingly, gnawingly, grindingly hungry. My body cries out for protein. I look speculatively at my fingers and wonder how flavoursome they'd be and if I'd really miss one or two of them. Even Burger King would sometimes start appearing as an attractive prospect, assuming I'd run out of fingers first. I honestly don't know how sausage-dodgers do it. I get home at the end of the day and flop face-first into a plate of beef stew because if I didn't I wouldn't give next door's baby ten minutes if they left it unattended.
Anyway, this morning I leapt from my repose like a gazelle (as usual) and scampered into the kitchen to slice my meat-free luncheon. I popped open the fridge and took out carrots, check, tomatoes, check, cucumber...
Cucumber?
Cucumber. You know, big green thing. Suggestively shaped. I know I had one. I ate some of it yesterday.
I rummaged through the fridge, but against all reason or sense, I was shy one cucumber.
You'd think that it'd be difficult to mislay a large vegetable in an area as small as a fridge, but somehow I managed it. I know I had one. It was there yesterday. I know there's a whole lot of possible places I might have stuck a cucumber, but very few places I could stick one and then forget about it. So now I'm confused. 24 hours ago, I had a cucumber in my fridge. Now I don't. Could I have been sleep-eating? I certainly didn't have any dreams about eating a large cucumber-shaped biscuit, so that seems unlikely. Or perhaps the phanton cucumber thief of old London town has struck? Whatever else, it's certainly a mystery.
