Fruit

Going Back to the Melon

/ Organikos / Leave a comment
The watermelon has long inspired artists, such as Giuseppe Recco's Still Life With Fruit (1634-1695). The first color sketches of the red-fleshed, sweet watermelon in Europe can be found in a medieval medical manuscript, the Tacuinum Sanitatis. PHOTO: Dea, A. Dagli Orti/Deagnostini/ GETTY

The watermelon has long inspired artists, such as Giuseppe Recco’s Still Life With Fruit (1634-1695). The first color sketches of the red-fleshed, sweet watermelon in Europe can be found in a medieval medical manuscript, the Tacuinum Sanitatis. PHOTO: Dea, A. Dagli Orti/Deagnostini/ GETTY

Watermelon may be the best picnic dessert nature ever created with its sweet juice cleverly bound inside that spongy red (sometimes yellow) matrix, and fully protected by psychedelic green rind. And no matter how you slice it, this green cannonball of nutrition is attracting scientific attention as an elixir that reduces muscle pain after workouts and a whole lot more. And the myriad ways it lends itself beautifully in the kitchen. But what about its history? Continue reading →

Veganism, say hello to jackfruit!

/ Rosanna Abrachan / 3 Comments
Jackfruit is the largest tree-borne fruit and is found across Asia, Africa, and parts of North and South America

Jackfruit is the largest tree-borne fruit and is found across Asia, Africa, and parts of North and South America

It’s the peak of summer in Kerala now. Here, the fruiting seasons are celebrated with an expo to encourage cultivation and to introduce the urban populace to some good old food traditions.At a recent jackfruit expo (watch this space for more on a mango showcase), the city-bred me who’d otherwise encountered the fruit only in flavored sorbet and ice cream figured what it was all about. Then I did some reading and this month-old article in The Guardian had me hooked:

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The frontal view when a jackfruit is cut

Late last year, after 18 years of litigation, a senior government official in Kerala, south-west India was given a prison sentence after being convicted of theft. The object he stole was government property, and it was so large he had to have it cut up to get it home. A piece of art, perhaps? A precious metal? Actually, it was a 40-year-old jackfruit tree, and, once you’ve tasted its fruit, you begin to understand why he did it.

Continue reading →

A Biodiversity Triumph at Marari

/ Kayleigh Levitt / 8 Comments

As I mentioned in my last post, the new property, Marari Pearl, could easily be called the Beach Banana Genome Project because it has 30 varieties of bananas being grown on it. When Amie and I saw the list of everything being grown on the property, our joy was akin to kids on christmas.

Have you ever seen a rambutan?

Have you ever seen a rambutan?

Since I’ve been reading The Fruit Hunters by Adam Leith Gollner, I’ve realized the role variety awareness plays in conserving biodiversity. Simply not knowing about all the varieties allows agribusiness to monopolize the market with one or two varieties that best suit global trade. For example, when people only saw red and yellow apples in the supermarket, they did not know what they were missing out on, so they weren’t as picky. Once Fujis and Galas became known, customers began to demand more. Knowledge of varieties is seen as a threat to supermarket because customers focused on varieties become less easy to please with subpar, out-of-season fruits.

So with that being said, simple awareness of varieties is a method of raising the bar. It helps promote biodiversity because people are less willing to accept generic and standardized fruit.

On the Marari Pearl property, there are pomelos, rambutans, and tamarinds. There are several types of jackfruit,  lovi-lovis, mangos, and oranges. I was particularly excited to see the miracle fruit on the list. Continue reading →

International Environmental Film Festival of Paris: Prize List and Small Gems

/ Allegra / 3 Comments

The 30th edition of the International Environmental Film Festival closed in Paris a few weeks ago. The selection of rare, beautiful and eye-opening films was a treat so I wanted to share some of the goodness with you.

Grand Prix: The Fruit hunters by Yung Chang

Inspired by Adam Leith Gollner’s book of the same name -that also inspired a post in these pages – Canadian director Yung Chang (Up the Yangtze) enters the world of fans of rare varieties of fruits.  As he follows fruit hunters’ travels and meet-ups, he finds the tree of an almost extinct mango, comes across actor Bill Pullman and interviews many of these unsung heroes of biodiversity. The aesthetics of the cinematography makes those fruits and those characters irresistible. Continue reading →

Breadfruit

/ Salim.E.I / Leave a comment

Breadfruit is an equatorial tropical fruit species found at the elevation of 1500m in the Western Ghats of South India. The starchy, potato-like fruit has a taste and texture similar to freshly baked bread when cooked; and hence the name ‘Breadfruit’. The tree grows vigorously to a height of 25m and produce 120-200 fruits annually. Continue reading →

Foraging for Plenty

/ Amie Inman / 7 Comments

When I lived in either tropical or Mediterranean environments it was never surprising (but always exciting) to see trees and bushes laden with fruit in their season; mangoes, citrus, and papaya in Costa Rica, or figs, pomegranates and lemons on a Croatian island.  But when we temporarily relocated to Atlanta I was happy to discover similar levels of abundance in both urban and suburban environments.  In some cases there were trees that looked like they had outlived what some in the neighborhood are wont to call “the war of northern aggression”, such as the pear trees owned by the Dunwoody Preservation Trust, while in others it was a fresh commitment to collective action like the Dunwoody Community Garden where food pantry harvesters pick, wash and bag lbs of produce from donation plots to distribute to a local food bank. (Current estimates for these initiatives are over 1,500 lbs of produce plus 567 lbs of pears to be exact!)

In a time of disparity between the amounts of fresh food produced in the world and the number of people who go without it, I am happy to participate in and proselytize about programs that help alleviate this  imbalance. In the United States Community gardens are springing up around the country on both public and private land, in likely places such as empty lots, school yards and church yards, as well as surprise locations like urban rooftops.  And while those gardens are used by individuals to allow food security for their families, a large portion of them also plant with surplus in mind in order to donate to local food banks.  Continue reading →