Nancy wrote:

> But not that much! I'm pulling in 8-10 of them a day, and I am
> not looking very hard, I'm sure there are more under there. Yikes!
>
> I might have to foist them off on the soup kitchen. I wonder how
> long before they start closing the gates when they see me coming.

A couple summers ago I made some interesting salads using an equal volume of
chopped cucumbers and chopped melon. Add some red onion, herbs (basil, mint,
cilantro, whatever...), bell pepper if you want, and dress with rice vinegar
and salt (add sugar if needed). I sometimes also added oil, but it depends
on what the salad is accompanying.

Another nice simple summertime cucumber-melon salad is this, which I
invented last year: Watermelon, tomatoes, cucumber, onion, salt, and
champagne vinegar. You might like to add feta cheese, but I didn't.

Cucumber salads are a staple with Vietnamese or Thai food. Peel and slice
the cucumbers and dress them with fish sauce, lime juice, sugar, Fresno
chile rings, and scallion rings. You might need to add some water to temper
the fish sauce.

Another Southeast Asian salad I made contained cucumber, jícama, carrots,
and spring onion all placed into a ziploc bag and marinated with white
vinegar, sugar, salt, Maggi sauce, and sriracha.

If you're having Mexican food, try this side salad: Cucumber, jícama, orange
segments, and onion. Sprinkle with lime juice, salt, and powdered chile.

Most people are familiar with the simple dish of cucumbers in vinegar and
sugar. Bon Appétit printed a "Japanese cucumber salad" once in which you
slice the cucumbers and then *massage* them in the sweetened vinegar. This
gives them a different texture and allows them to absorb the flavorings more
quickly.

Here's a salad I came up with in 2009: "Thinly slice a couple fennel bulbs
crosswise and soak in water with a bit of lime juice. Cut half a pineapple
into thin chunks and put them into a salad bowl. Peel and seed a cucumber,
then cut it into chunks about the same size as the pineapple chunks; add to
the salad bowl. Finely mince a serrano chile and add it to the salad bowl.
Shake the water out of the fennel shreds and add to the salad bowl. Sprinkle
with salt and freshly-ground black pepper. Pour rice vinegar over the salad,
toss well, and allow to sit, tossing occasionally, for at least half an hour
(so that it becomes a bit pickled).

Cucumbers are an important ingredient in many banh mi.

Marcus Samuelsson's Cucumber-Melon Soup:
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Iced Korean Cucumber Soup:
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Honeydew-Cucumber Salad with Lemon-Mint Vinaigrette
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Rojak can be a great use for cucumbers, and koko posted a pretty good recipe
for it on her blog. Just increase the proportion of cucumbers you use.
http://www.kokoscornerblog.com/mycor...and-jicam.html

The only time I saw a cooked cucumber dish was in a discussion about
Hungarian cuisine. I don't have that recipe with me, but you can surely
Google for it if that kind of thing interests you.

Finally, a *great* use for cucumber is using them to infuse vodka. Iced tea
with cucumber-flavored vodka is a wonderful summertime cooler.

Bob