Nibbles: Taste, Guano, Breeding squared, Satellites, Subsidies, Harakeke, Pomegranate

It’s a miracle

Synsepalum dulcificum is apparently the latest thing in the salons of the chic.

CARRIE DASHOW dropped a large dollop of lemon sorbet into a glass of Guinness, stirred, drank and proclaimed that it tasted like a “chocolate shake.”

Nearby, Yuka Yoneda tilted her head back as her boyfriend, Albert Yuen, drizzled Tabasco sauce onto her tongue. She swallowed and considered the flavor: “Doughnut glaze, hot doughnut glaze!”

Could there be a new export market for the “miracle berry” with its extraordinary ability to change the way things taste?

Speaking of which, I was at a nursery the other day and noticed that they offered plants of Stevia rebaudiana. that’s another of those well-known miracle plants, which is itself sweet, rather than making other things taste weird. I was interested because last I heard, Stevia was not permitted in Europe. Admittedly I haven’t kept up; maybe it is now. Anyway, I niblled on a bit of leaf, and it was remarkably sweet.

Nibbles: Global Food, Aid, Nettles, Women, Aquaculture, Education