Judith Field

Our lives are just likea cucumber, bitter or sweet

Wednesday 15th 2011f June 2011

Food has been in the news lately. A couple of weeks ago, Marmite was made illegal in Denmark, on the grounds that the vitamins added to it make it a risk to public health. Some said that we Brits should retaliate, by boycotting bacon. Fine unless you're vegetarian, Jewish or Muslim, I suppose we'll just have to find our own way to do it.

Then, at the end of May, despite the event being officially cancelled because of health and safety, hundreds of people took to the top of a hill to watch competitors throw themselves after an eight-pound wheel of Double Gloucester cheese.

This was the Cooper's Hill Cheese-Rolling, an annual event going back at least 200 years. The winner got to take the cheese home. I don't think I'd like to eat it after it'd been rolled down a rain-sodden grassy hill, but that isn't the point. What the point actually is, I don't know.

If the winner doesn't fancy eating their prize, they could try wearing it. A group of students at the University of Bath have stunned the fashion world by creating five dresses; heat-moulded and sculpted entirely out of a tonne of cheese. The range includes a ball gown encrusted with melted cheddar and each outfit comes with a pair of "Jimmy Cheese" shoes. Not practical for a cheese lover like myself: I'd be arrested for indecency within half an hour.

People in the US can now buy a sandwich in a can. We can get them online. They; the sandwiches, not the people, have a one-year shelf-life and will come in 12 flavours including US-style peanut butter and grape jam, barbecue chicken and pepperoni pizza. If they introduce chopped liver or humus varieties, I think they'll be on to a winner.

At the moment, though, there is no getting away from cucumbers. According to Dorset police, cucumbers feature among the bizarre excuses given by motorists for dangerous driving. One man who was stopped for using his mobile phone while driving was asked by the police officer whether the call was an emergency. The driver replied: "Er, actually, no. My wife was calling me to remind me to get a cucumber."

And now, our salad bowls look threatening. Because they're eaten raw, vegetables in salads have more potential to pass on deadly organisms. In Germany, vegetables carrying E coli caused the death of more than 20 people, with thousands more suffering from serious, potentially fatal, symptoms. Scientists believe the likely source is bean sprouts being infected by bacteria in animal manure used to fertilise crops. At the start of the outbreak authorities blamed contaminated Spanish cucumbers, but later admitted this was wrong.

I've heard it said that life is like a cucumber: it can be long or short, it can be hard or soft, it can be bitter or sweet, but mostly it's bland. But not in the EU, at least as far as that length bit is concerned. It might look like one of those Euro-myths that the likes of UKIP put about, but there really is a regulation that lays down quality standards for size and also for the degree of curvature.

There's no escape from cucumbers, even in the Torah. This week's parsha describes the Israelites whingeing at poor Moses because they’re fed up (literally) with eating nothing but manna. They describe all the vegetables they claim to have eaten in Egypt, and cucumbers are first in the list.
Recently, I wrote a letter to another newspaper, after they'd printed a suggestion from a reader that kidney beans could cure bedwetting.

I said that the suggestion seemed to be based on something called The Doctrine of Signatures, dating from around 2,000 years ago. This claimed that herbs that resembled various body parts could be used to treat ailments of that part of the body. While many medicines had been developed from natural sources, there was no scientific evidence that plant shapes and colours had any bearing on what they might treat, and that professional advice should be sought.
I don't suppose you’ll be surprised to see that my letter wasn't printed, probably my use of the phrase "superstitious nonsense" didn't help.
But it has left me wondering what on earth the original correspondent might expect to treat by eating cucumbers, particularly the short, curly ones that Europe doesn’t like. Answers on a postcard, please.