My partner posted on Metafilter and received 18 answers. He was born in 1982.

Median filtering is a natural way to eliminate them. We can only know the past: the past where grocery store cucumbers were slightly more dangerous than they are today. Or did they? Unsurprisingly, some of these cucumbers have spines. (If you need a hobby). How to Peel, Core, and Seed Fresh Tomatoes in 5 Easy Steps “Isn’t it weird how cucumbers don’t have spikes on them anymore?” my partner asked me.“Cucumbers don’t have spikes,” I said, as I picked up a cucumber from the vegetable display at Whole Foods.

“Your cucumbers are perfectly normal,” a columnist reassured one nervous spikey-cuke grower But if we’ve sort-of established that the Great Cucumber De-Spiking took place somewhere in the 1990s,  how was it done? I usually try and make the piece no larger than about half an inch. Unless you're making a salad, you'll probably also want to I have never encountered a grocery-store cucumber with spikes” “They do,” he insisted.

I can certainly guess that the grocery stores of 35 to 40 years ago carried different, or less uniformly prickly varieties of cucumber than they carry today. Use it to slowly drill a small hole into the spikes, but do not drill through the entire shoe. Use a peeler to remove the dark green outer skin. The seeds can also add too much additional moisture to recipes if they're left intact, and the seeds in large, very mature cucumbers are just plain unpleasant to consume.

Whatever you're using a cucumber for, you may not be a fan of its seeds. Thankfully, there's an old trick I learned from my Indian friend's mom to remove the bitterness from cucumbers, and it's super easy. They actually can cool the blood, and they're 95 percent water so they're healthy, too. While there are spineless varieties, grocery stores don’t seem to prioritize buying them.There are in fact a dizzying variety of cucumbers, vastly more diverse than the mundane pole and English cucumbers that are present at every American grocery stores. I digress, but, seriously, think about it,So why did cucumbers at the grocery store start to get less prickly (in some locations), at some point in the late 1980s or early 1990s? “ Well, they did. The “why” bit remains unclear, and I can’t find any Internet cucumber historians who could explain – but I know they’re out there, and I hope one of them writes me an indignant letter. By using The Spruce Eats, you accept our

The flawless green water-crunchers you see at the grocery store, stacked up in perfect lines, are another marvel of denatured marketing, just like artificially-ripened tomatoes and aggressively waxed shiny apples. Gardeners have been cultivating and devouring them for approximately 3,000 years. The goal is not to damage the shoe. The cucumbers definitely had spikes when I was a kid. But that’s still time and energy that people in our ever time-strapped world would rather not exert.Whatever the reason, the memory of a time when Grocery Store Cucumbers Had the Prickles is eroding, slowly but surely, from our collective memories in the United States. And why? Another theory is “liability” – otherwise known as a cultural rejection of the romantic, dark danger of eating a cucumber that might make you go “ouch” for like a second if you grab it the wrong way out of the crisper.The student of history might theorize that cucumbers lost their spines at a time in American life when many things were being rendered safer, less dangerous, more boring. If the spike is too difficult to remove using the steps above, then it is time to get the drill out. Remove Spikes from a Signal. Most of the cucumbers that you see at the grocery store are varieties that do have spines in their natural form. “Cucumber have never had spikes.

We cannot know the future. Cut the cucumber in half lengthwise after you've removed the skin. Sure, it takes two seconds to wipe off the spines. Press the spoon down gently into the seed channel, facing down. I do not agree with those tight-lipped middle-aged people who maintain that millenials have had easy and care-free lives, but I will admit that in this one, extremely specific instance, they are right: people my age have never accidentally pricked themselves on a supermarket cucumber. Harvest – when the cucumbers have turned deep yellow and show lighter yellow stripes, they are ready to harvest. The cucumber will begin oxidizing as soon as it loses its skin, and this will turn it soggy. Cucumber varieties are seemingly endless: there’s an entire Freaky Cucumber world out there to discover. The stuck spike is a lost cause. “We stared at each other. It will break apart easily without its peel. Repeat as necessary to remove them all, but you can usually get all the seeds in two scoops.

There’s the lemon cucumber, which does look eerily like a Meyer lemon, and the exceedingly long Chinese “Suyo Long” variety, which garden catalogs advise you to allow toSome cucumbers even sprout little hairs instead of spines: I firmly believe that an unshorn, hairy cucumber is way more This dizzying kaleidoscope of cucumber varieties is often divided up into “pickling” and “slicing:” varieties. To remove seeds for salads or to create stuffed “cucumber boats,” slice the cucumber in half and remove seeds with a spoon. Pressing a slice of cucumber to the roof of your mouth for a minute can get rid of bad breath, and they even have a reputation as hangover-busters due to their high content of Vitamin B and electrolytes, although it's recommended that you eat one before you imbibe. Lay the cucumber on your cutting board in a vertical position. ; Settle down with a pair of tweezers—Try to pick out as many of the pieces as you can with a knife, needle or, preferably, tweezers.The biggest problem is that sea urchin spines often break off under the skin, so be very careful when plucking out the spines. Recipes that call for a seeded cucumber are usually looking for that light fresh taste that comes from the inside of the cucumber. Most of us are in fact unaware that cucumbers have spikes at all, which is a little bit embarrassing, though I think not nearly as embarrassing as not knowing, like Baby Boomers, that college is much more expensive than it used to be.We are so unaware of their true spiky nature that many of us are startled – shocked – when we grow them ourselves and are confronted with cucumbers bristling with spines.

Consider the open-loop voltage across the input of an analog instrument in the presence of 60 Hz power-line noise. 2.