I love cucumbers, eating them whole as a snack, tossing them into a salad or even grating them and adding them to a raita.

My mum says cucumbers are a great source of reducing water retention, not sure who she talking about, because I have soda retention.

Thanks to load shedding, 8 hours straight at a time.. literally, our house group and my work group are right after each other, meaning that when I leave home without power, I am most likely going to get to work just as the power in that group goes off.

Let me not mention the heat, with no power, there is no fan to cool me off, the other night we were off from 22:00 till 02:00, when I woke up the following morning, my sheet had a wet outline from where I had being laying… I seriously hate summer.

Then comes the food, with the power network, being so fragile, I am too scared to go shopping in case I miss the time frame and land up with an entire cart of groceries and no power to cook a meal, so it has been take aways or something I can make using anything I gather in the pantry or the fridge.

Which means, that everyone is eating like the food is really horrible and I have not even attempted to put the oven on, I seriously do not want to make it any hotter than it already is. The parentals are not impressed and although I am buying eet sum more biscuits by the dozen it doesn’t seem to be pleasing them.

Today, Eskom seemed to have answered my prayers and we went off once at home during the early hours of the morning, thank God when I was at work and drinking my 8^th cup of coffee, so on the way home, I stopped at the stores and filled my shopping cart like my life depended on it.

I came across this recipe in Madhur Jaffrey’s recipe book and seeing as I managed to squeeze in an English cucumber into my basket and it survived the ride home, I decided to put it to use and make something with it.

I wasn’t really sure how this recipe would come out, seeing as I have never eaten this dish before or have a picture of what it should look like.

The verdict, my mother loved it, I loved it and my dad well he wasn’t really sure what he was supposed to be eating, but that is his response lately for anything I make him eat. Men I tell you.

Ingredients:

• 2 x cucumbers, cut into wedges.
• 1/3 x tsp salt.
• 1/8 x tsp cayenne pepper.
• Freshly ground black pepper.
• 1/3 x tsp cumin seeds.
• ¾ x tsp lemon juice.

Method:

• Arrange the wedges on a plate.
• Sprinkle over the salt, cayenne pepper, black pepper, cumin seeds and lemon juice.
• Toss everything together to allow the spices to coat the cucumber.