You must log in or # to comment.
PSA: serviceberry is a very very very common decorative hedge, the berries are extremely tasty.
It absolutely baffles me how no one is growing them commercially to sell in grocery stores, they’re clearly grown commercially to some degree for use in juices and stuff, but i guess selling to individuals is just a step too far? It’s not like they’re even remotely difficult to grow or harvest…Some local plants might be edible and even delicious, but they are either way to costly to grow or harvest, or they are nigh impossible to preserve. Or they simply are edible, but not sustaining, like sucking nectar from stinging nettle blossoms.
Some are acquired tastes like e.g. turnip tops. You could probably harvest tons of them, but there is no real market for it.
Or take edible flowers, you basically can’t preserve them, and all you can do is put them on a dish for decoration.
Pearl Onions are a borderline case, for example. Between harvest and sitting in the pickling juice they only have a few hours (3-6, IIRC), or they are a case for the compost heap.
I live in a subtropical climate and it seems like most typical garden plants are not really good for our weather, it’s too hot for some and too wet for many who like hot.
Our winners are:
Trees- starfruit, longan, mango, papaya all do well.
Garden -
summer, wet season - Okra mostly. Hong Tsoi, Eggplant (little ones) Watermelon (little ones) sweet potato (Stokes Purple), tomatoes, basil.
winter, dry season- Collards, peppers, broccoli (Green Magic) cauliflower, arugula, fennel, lettuce, radishes. Cilantro, or dill. A lot of the typical northern summer plants can be started in December or January to grow in the “spring” that runs from January to April ish.
In between - peppers, fennel, mustard greens, eggplant, pumpkin type squash (but bugs always eat it) tomatoes.
For Polish speakers theres this book by prof. Łuczaj: https://lukaszluczaj.pl/dzikie-rosliny-jadalne-polski-pelny-tekst/ - every plant that grows in our region and can be eaten. In some more edgy cases backed by his own experimentation on himself.
Does he also document the fuckable plants? I’m asking for a friend
Oh boy are you in for a surprise…
There’s his “Sex in the great (grand?) forrest”. Its about best plants to fuck on (or under). Mostly. As side notes it does point out some local plants in particularly interesting shapes, or some one might rub themself against… This guy is commited. And also an actual true professor on an actual university.
So… cool story
Ann Reardon from How to Cook That, took Coke, and tested it for HFCS, it of course indicated it was in there, then she took a Mexican Coke, and it also indicated, but it claims not to use it.
Apparently, the acid in the Coke breaks down the sucrose in the cane sugar, making the product very close to the HFCS variant. She followed up with a blind taste test (very limited size, just her family) and found they were very close in flavor.
It would appear that we do to some decent extent enjoy HFCS.
Have you seen the size of the average American?
Who is ignoring that we don’t like HFCS? It’s downright an addictive substance.
I think if you ask 100 Americans, they will overwhelmingly be down on HFCS.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone that’s tried coke with cane sugar and doesn’t say that it’s better than regular cook.
Everybody I know that drinks Coke thinks that Mexican Coke is superior, but is hard to get in a lot more expensive.
There’s a pretty significant campaign against it.
I hate to bring race and racism into this, but one reason why I laugh at many racists, especially European racists, is how they claim they love their own national culture but do jack shit to have ANYTHING to do with its pre-colonial cuisine. Take British cuisine for example. While obviously people in medieval England (even the richest people at the time) had far fewer options than most people in the UK today, but they still used many herbs and plants for seasonings that are only being rediscovered by reenactors in recent years, and they are actually quite good.
More than just culture, the dangers of over-reliance on a handful of crops and cultivars is also dangerous. The Irish potato famine happened in the 1840s due to Irish potato crops just being a few kinds instead of the hundreds of varieties that you would find in South America. The result of this is that a blight that would have had a negligible effect in South America absolutely devastated Ireland. More recently in the 20th century, we have a near complete destruction of the Gros Michel banana in the 1950s. When you go to your typical supermarket, the bananas you see there are more than likely going to be Cavendish Bananas, which were considered inferior to Gros Michel in the past, but due to disease rendering Gros Michel bananas commercially nonviable they were chosen because they were all we got…
and the same shit could happen at any time to the Cavendish banana, too.
I have to correct you on your terrible misunderstanding of the Irish Genocide. Your misinformation is almost certainly not your fault, as I was uncritically taught the same utter bullshit in my primary school curriculum in the USA. The Irish genocide that you refer to as using the colonizer’s term “Irish Potato Famine” had absolutely fuckall to do with potatoes or the Irish. The absent landlords in England extracted mandatory “tax” in the form of literally every food crop that the Irish
slavestenants grew. There was ALWAYS, literally at ALL POINTS IN TIME, enough food to feed the people of Ireland. The food was physically stolen with violence and exported to cover “rent” to English “landlords” that never set foot in the country. Potatoes were grown in an act of extreme desperation as they were not a crop that was consideredthefttax-worthy and therefore the Irish did their best to feed themselves.Think critically about it for like one second. Do you really believe that it was just a bunch of silly dumb Irishmen that only ever thought to grow literally a single crop for all of their food? In such a lush and nutrient rich area that is still famous for like a dozen high quality staples in different food groups? Or did you just get duped by racists that still spread their bullshit successfully?
I am aware that the Irish famine was very multi-faceted and was an act of genocide. But for the sake of this particular argument (diversity in crops) I did point out that much of the Irish potato crop was a mono-culture, and the British absolutely brought over the blight without any concern of what it might do.
