Eat Your Words

It all started with this quote:

Let my words, like vegetables, be tender and sweet, for tomorrow I may have to eat them.

Looking for some attribution a bit more satisfying than "Anonymous," I started wandering far and near, until I ended up visiting the Yorkshire, England, home of the online-only World Carrot Museum.

I offer this destination to all you gardeners who are finding the weather joyless and the summer garden desolate (Hello, Austin!) hoping you will find some joy in the exhibit Carrots in Literature (from Shakespeare to Shel Silverstein) or if not there, perhaps in the idiosyncratic gallery featuring Carrots in Works of Art.

Carrots are the new biscuits in our house, a recent if not entirely welcome switch after I got fed up feeding the beagle ludicrously expensive treats she invariably inhaled without so much of a thanks.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

For further pseudo-gardening inspiration, check out the recently unveiled Urban Trees 5 exhibit now standing fanciful and bizarre along the San Diego North Embarcadaro (click on the first thumbnail and scroll on through). Here's some background on this on-going Port of San Diego public arts project.

9:00 PM ET | 08-13-2008 | permalink

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Henbane Vs. Fat Hen: Pick Your Poison

So have you heard about the feature in the British magazine where a certain deadly plant is recommended as a salad green?

Mistakes happen and a British chef made a doozy when he confused the truly spooky nightshade family plant, henbane (Hyoscyamus niger), with the not-entirely-innocent weed, fat hen (Chenopodium album).

Yet neither are quite as horrible or wonderful as the headlines about the chef's gaffe would lead us to believe.

Fat hen, according to one source, is an acceptable if bland substitute for spinach with leaves that are best not eaten raw, at least not in large quantities. Evidentally, many of the species contain saponins, particularly toxic to cold-blooded animals (it was a favorite tribal way to stun fish). Fat hen is also contraindicated for arthritis.

Of course I also enjoyed reading that when eaten with beans, fat hen can prevent gas.

Henbane, as any readers of Shakespeare know, kills -- or at least disturbs the nervous system, "as if some diabolical force took possession of the brain and prevented its functions."
On the other hand, the Egyptians smoked it to dull toothaches and if you've ever had one (a toothache, that is) you can imagine how grateful they were to have it.

Henbane was also used in the Middle Ages to to flavor and enhance the effects of beer (Pilsen=Bilson=German word for henbane. Check out this overview.

I picked up fabulous salad greens at the farmer's market yesterday with lots of spicy weeds. Alas, no altered states...

12:02 PM ET | 08- 7-2008 | permalink

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Pomegranate Juice Fights Cavities

So we know (or think we know) that pomegranate juice -- like acai from Brazil, and other superfruit juices -- helps with everything from lowering bad cholesterol to inhibiting prostate cancer and reducing some of the risks from diabetes.

Today word arrives that two young men from Flatbush have discovered that pomegranate juice can help fight cavities. Here's a bit more from Touro College contact Barbara Franklin about Zev Zelman and Elliot Lutz:

The students based their research on the knowledge that cavities are not caused by the consumption of sweets, but rather the bacteria that ferment the dietary carbohydrates to produce lactic acid, which eats away at tooth enamel. However, pomegranate juice, and to a lesser degree pomegranate tea, effectively deactivate the bacteria within 10 minutes of contact. Other beverages tested that were effective included grape juice, cranberry juice, and some wines. The other beverages tested in the research had slight or no effect on the bacteria.

So maybe this should have been a picture of pomegranates in the wild instead of Zelman and Lutz in the office of their Dean of Students (Robert Goldschmidt) to merit the TP blog? Perhaps. But if it's the thought that counts, my thinking is this: Man brags while Nature indulges.

photo credit: Richard Lobel Photography

 

Feedback, please. Do you or don't you want to see TP venturing this far from Eden?

1:04 AM ET | 05- 1-2008 | permalink

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