Nuts for pears

A funny thing happened to Dave Arnold on his globe-trotting effort to sample the apples of the world: he got waylaid by the pears. What happened next is the subject of a truly wonderful blog post that highlights his enthusiasm and ability to convey subtleties of the eating experience. Not bad for a chap who “helps chefs achieve their most ambitious goals using new technologies, techniques, and ingredients … including sous vide and hydrocolloids”. But of course, a trained mind and a trained palate can tackle anything, to whit:

  • Cayuga … tasted of Nik-L-Nips ((Whatever they are. Ed.))
  • Hermansverk 1/1 tasted of canned black California olives
  • Perdue 41 was a dead ringer for giant water-bug essence

Seriously, this is a tour de force, and you know we don’t use that term lightly. The tragedy is that Brogdale makes next to no use of its riches.

Nibbles: Old fruit, Same fruit, Fruit juice, Dog breeding, Plant Cuttings, Seed storage, Romanian cattle breeds

Nibbles: Micro-gardens, Bananas, School farm, Tourism, Conservation, Cancun, Rice, DNA, Rice again, Obesity, Coconut

3D trees in Google Earth

The latest version of Google Earth has 3D trees! Just a few cities’ parks, a couple of wild sites (rainforest, mangroves…) and a reforestation project for now, but surely more to come.

I look forward to seeing the world’s great field genebanks in 3D in due course, such as the coconut genebank in Ivory Coast or the Breadfruit Institute’s collection in Hawaii. And maybe eventually even smaller ones, such as this fruit collection I visited last week in Tajikistan.

But maybe we could start with Pavlovsk?