黃瓜，想說愛你不容易

黃瓜，想說愛你不容易

對于黃瓜這種索然無味的蔬菜，英國人從來沒有抱怨過。我感到很奇怪。我們?yōu)楹文邮芰诉@種乏味的蔬菜呢？黃瓜是否都是這么無味呢？

測試中可能遇到的詞匯和知識：

mutter喃喃自語，出怨言['m?t?r]

travesty滑稽模仿，歪曲['tr?v?sti]

habituated習慣于……的[h??b?t?ue?t?d]

bendy易彎的；多彎的['bendi]

truncheons警棍，警棒 ['tr?nt??n]

allotment分配，配給的土地，命運[?'lɑ?tm?nt]

edible可食用的

omnivores不偏食的人，雜食動物['ɑ?mn?v??r]

bland乏味的；溫和的[bl?nd]

Why don't we complain about cucumbers?（702 words）

By Bee Wilson

Slicing into a watery cucumber, it struck me that I have almost never heard anyone in Britain complain about the vegetable (or fruit). Every summer I can remember, people have been saying that tomatoes are not what they used to be. But cucumbers we just accept as they are: as insipid as watermelon without the sweetness. Like so many other foods, especially if they are cheap, cucumbers are something we don't even expect to be flavourful.

Tomatoes are unusual in that we still have a dim folk memory of something better. I've lost track of the times I've heard someone mutter that the average tomato — a squelchy red balloon bred for disease resistance not pleasure — is a travesty compared with the sun-ripe ones they remember from childhood or from holidays in Italy. This is true. And maybe our complaining has worked because tomatoes that actually taste of something — whether cherry ones on the vine or heirloom varieties from a farmers' market — are far easier to find than a few years ago.

Good mass-market cucumbers, on the other hand, are as rare as hen's teeth, yet even those of us who claim to be cucumber lovers seem unfussed by the situation. “We have forgotten the taste of a good cucumber,” writes Jessica Seaton in Gather Cook Feast: Recipes from Land and Water, a collection of recipes celebrating the connection between food and the land. Seaton notes that we have become “habituated” to the “hydroponically grown, ramrod-straight, selected-for-shelf-life versions”. Some years ago, Seaton visited Tusheti National Park in Georgia and tasted cucumbers that had been grown in “black, rich soil” and were “intensely cucumber-y, tasting like a memory of a cucumber I have never had”.

Our problem with cucumbers is that we have lost our knowledge of anything better. Gardeners are among the few who realise that those slightly bendy plastic-wrapped truncheons are not all that a cucumber can be. I have a friend who grows ridged cucumbers on her allotment that convinced me my previous notion of the vegetable was faulty. Her ones have a sweet-bitter flavour, subtle but noticeable, and the crunch is so loud it's as if you have suddenly turned up the volume. As for bought cucumbers, the most “cucumber-y” ones I have found are either the tiny ones in Asian grocers (which are more concentrated in taste, because they have less water) or the strong-tasting Italian ridge ones sold by Natoora (via Ocado). Yet the latter have very mixed reviews, with several unhappy shoppers finding them far too bitter. We are so brainwashed by watery hothouse cucumbers that a flavourful one can be shocking.

Does it matter if we have forgotten what certain foods should taste like if the not-good versions give us pleasure? Maybe not. But I can't shake the thought that keeping our senses awake to which foods are the most edible is a basic part of being human. This sensory awareness is how omnivores stay alive. A watery cucumber causes little damage, except to make a salad bland. But what happens when we stop recognising bad food when it is right in front of our noses?

It's not just cucumbers whose taste we have forgotten. Chef Dan Barber, in his 2014 book The Third Plate, argues that “we've lost the taste of wheat”. Ordinary consumers of bread a few centuries ago were so discerning they could tell when bread had been made from one type of wheat rather than another. To the average consumer now, wheat flour is not something that is even meant to have a taste. No wonder we can't always tell the difference between something dodgy marketed as a “health food” and something fresh and unpackaged that might actually do us good. Half the time, we don't have a clue what we are eating.

When we stop knowing what food should taste like and trust words on a label instead, we make ourselves easy prey. Cyrus Redding, an expert on wine fraud in the 19th century, said that the best protection against fraudulent wine was “a perfect acquaintance with that which is good”. The same is true of food. It's when we forget what we are even missing that we are in trouble.