Cucumber and Lime Salad

Recipe Hits and Misses

Recipe Hits: Easy, crunchy, and with a satisfying spicy zip due to the lime and red pepper flakes, this recipe was from Allrecipes.com and it was as good as it was simple

Recipe Misses: I finished too soon! I wanted more, so next time I would add 2 or more cucumbers for guests or the whole cucumber for my individual needs.

Ingredients

medium cucumber (I used half when I made this recipe but I am giving you the recipe adjusted for the whole cucumber)

juice of a whole lime

2 tbls of diced cilantro

0.5 (or so) crushed red pepper

salt and pepper to taste

Plan of Attack

Cut your cucumber down its mid life horizontally (as if you were slicing a baguette to have 2 “C” shaped halves) and then using your best knife skills, cut them into slender straws

Place them in a bowl and juice your entire lime into the pieces. Add spices and cilantro, toss and serve cold. Yes, I agree with myself- it is simple, but so good!

Well I could go on and on about the loveliness which is firm hard cucumbers, but I won’t. Because it sounds slightly off color, and well, you probably know how awesome they are…I digress. I often want something light and crisp so I love adding to my repertoire of quick crunchy healthy dishes I can whip up before I reach for some ridiculous go to because I can only be super excited about an apple so many days in a row. This recipe satisfies! Cilantro is well, maybe not my spirit animal but certainly something my spirit animal grazes on, and if I were to ride my spirit animal (probably a tiny green elephant with or without wings) through a forrest, I would disembark and hope to be served this dish while my spirit animal happily digs into the rest of the cilantro bunch which was not used in this recipe. My spirit animal, I envision, is its own creature after my own heart who refuses to waste, and will eat the extra Cilantro even if if it’s a little too much Cilantro at a single sitting.

Now I have a way to plan for uses for the rest of the Cilantro bunch after a major recipe, because inevitably when I am cleaning my fridge I find a sad droopy cilantro bunch which was not completely utilized and was left to languish on the top shelf, lonely and suffering the indignity of not even being allowed to hang out with the other herbs and vegetables.

So, now talking about the cucumbers again, my usual go-to cucumber snack is simply salt, pepper, and powdered garlic with some balsamic, but this recipe seems like I am making more effort for myself than my traditional cucumber schtick. It’s kind of the difference between taking myself out for soft serve (which I like) versus taking me out for something fancier than soft serve. I encourage you to make it and add what makes sense for you- I would add sweet red peppers or even a corn/black bean combo for something more substantial.