Cucumber is a vegetable widely eaten by humans. In Japanese myth, the cucumber is also said to be the favorite food of kappa—turtle yōkai.
In the 2012 TV series episode Tale of the Yokai, 16 years in the past, Tang Shen met and befriended the time-traveling mutant turtles Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael and Michelangelo—the same turtles who would later be adopted by her husband Hamato Yoshi. After she brought them to her home, she fed them chopped cucumbers in accordance with myths about kappa. The turtles were initially not enthusiastic about eating cucumbers (Mikey demanded pizza instead), but by the end of the episode they had already started enjoying them.