What do you call the cucumbers that aren’t English cucumbers?

When I was in the grocery store yesterday trying to figure out what I might like to eat, I bought one. Today I ate the whole thing in sandwiches with a bit of mayo, and it was delicious, and I don’t know why I hadn’t been buying them more often.

I asked this question tonight of my tv-watching friends and their net connections, and we thought of “normal cucumbers”, “traditional cucumbers”, “garden cucumbers”, “slicing cucumbers”, and “field cucumbers”.

I first encountered long English cucumbers wrapped in clingfilm as something that the farm I worked at bought at a wholesaler and sold. I’ve never liked them all that much. People mostly leave the thin skins on, and I don’t like the skins. But I’d forgotten how much I like the other kind. They’re juicy and flavourfull and they respond well to salt, mayonnaise, or dips. I can’t wait to get another one.

I think that maybe after they started selling this kind too, the farm started calling the other kind “field cucumbers”.

There was a story in L.M. Montgomery’s The Story Girl where a character says that cucumbers and milk, taken before bedtime, generate vivid dreams. I can’t tell you tomorrow whether that’s true, since I ate the cucumber this morning and I’m drinking rock-chilled whisky now.