Okay let’s set the scene.

Christmas has been and gone. There are so many glittery decorations all over your house and bits of crumpled up wrapping paper that it looks like Christmas has thrown up in there. You live in a small place anyway but now it starts to feel claustrophobic from all the tinsel hanging down from the ceiling, empty boxes on the floor, and the oversized tree that seemed like a good idea at the time, but now is driving you nuts because you’ve gotta do some crazy dance just to get past it and into the kitchen. There are stray bits of Lego on the floor that you can’t even see because of the wrapping paper all over the place that make walking around in bare feet feel like playing Russian roulette. You’ve spent the season eating so many sugary Christmas cookies that you are jiggling in places that you didn’t even know could jiggle. The booze hasn’t helped either. You know you should tidy up but you feel lethargic and lazy from all the crap that you’ve been eating. All in all, you’ve had it up to HERE with Christmas.

Put down that leftover turkey leg that you’re gnawing on. Throw out that cranberry sauce that your drinking straight from the jar. Trust me. Nobody needs that shit. Pick up this tasty salad to insert in your gob instead. It literally takes 5 minutes to make and will fuel you will the vitamins that your body has been screaming out for, for the last week and a half. Real food. Real energy.

The time has come for Christmas to go fuck itself.

Cucumber Salad with Peanuts and Cilantro from the Thug Kitchen Fast as Fuck cookbook.

First the dressing. Easy shit. You could do this with your eyes closed. Rustle that bad boy up in less than a minute. (Kudos to the crazies who actually dare to do this blindfolded. Just keepin’ it interesting you know?*)

Now the as for the salad, I wanted to do this exactly the way the Thugs said, peeling and seeding the cucumber…But I just couldn’t do it. I started to, but throwing away perfectly good cucumber seeds just seemed so morally wrong. That’s the juiciest part of the cucumber and my dehydrated post-Christmas boozed-up body was telling me to leave those fuckers in. My cells needed rehydrating like a saggy humped camel crossing an arid desert in the midday sun.

I started peeling the cucumber. I got a ways in actually before suddenly thinking, ‘fuck it. If I’m not seeding these bastards what difference will it make if I leave the peel on too? Let’s keep this shit lazy’  So some of the cucumber slices have peel on and some don’t as you can see from the photo. I’m sure it would’ve been even better if I’d seeded and peeled the cucumber as specifically instructed but my post-Christmas lazy self was in the driving seat for this. I even tried to rationalise this shit with thoughts like, ‘I don’t get heartburn, why should I care if the peel is on or not?’ and ‘Fuck this, I’m gonna prove I’m still young by eating cucumber peel without getting acid reflux.’ But the truth is it was sheer laziness. Let’s call a lazy bitch a spade shall we?

Then came the next stage. The peanuts. They were meant to be unsalted roasted peanuts. I thought we had some in the cupboard, but it turns out someone has been sleep-snacking Again. So all I could find was a bag of salted mixed nuts. So I scooped out he peanuts I could find and chopped them up. I decided I’d just leave out the salt that the recipe called for because the peanuts would be plenty salty already, and threw in a dash of pepper to try and balance things out.

I whipped this shizzel up in 6 minutes. The book said it would take 5, but rummaging around for unsalted peanuts that just weren’t there held me up.

I slammed this shit on the table and it was the furthest thing from Christmas that our dining table had seen in what felt like an eternity. The vibration that reverberated out when the bowl hit the table made nearby tinsel quiver and shit itself because it knew it was next to be ousted. Christmas had been sent it’s eviction notice.

P.S. This Salad was delicious. Great dressing, great yet mild cilantro taste, and great crunch from the peanuts. Also the peanuts give it that protein twist that ignorant people claim we don’t get enough of. IN YOUR FACE vegetable-protein haters!

P.P.S. If you wanna unhealthy it up because you’re not quite ready to let go yet, you can throw some fries on the side.

* Don’t. Just don’t