Sacred Scarred

Friday is for Fruit

Cranberries are a group of evergreen dwarf shrubs or trailing vines found in acidic bogs primarily in the Northern Hemisphere. The fruit of the cranberry shrub (also called the cranberry) is white to start, but eventually turns deep red when fully ripe. Cranberries are acidic but often very, very sweet.

Cranberries are a major commercial crop in the United States. Aside from fresh cranberries (which account for only 5% of consumption), common (acceptable) uses of the cranberry (the other 95%) include cranberry juice (a natural cure for a bladder infection or UTI), cranberry sauce (my absolute favorite part of Thanksgiving dinner), and dried cranberries (a welcome addition to most salads).

Cranberries are grown in bogs and harvested in the fall.  To harvest cranberries, the bog is flooded.  Then, a harvester is driven through the flooded bog to knock the berries off of their vines.  Cranberries float and floating cranberries are next corralled into a corner of the bog where they are removed for cleaning, sorting, packaging, and processing.  You can buy cranberries of assorted varieties and constitutions at your local grocer (you may want to try White Cranberry Juice from Ocean Spray).  Enjoy (but be warned if you are from the UK and are taking Warfarin for some reason, cranberries may cause complications)!

If you don't remember how beautiful the Cranberries sounded, pick one of the videos below and enjoy...

Zombie

Linger

Ode to My Family

Dreams

Salvation

Friday is for Fruit

The mango fruit (appropriately) comes from the mango tree, a very large flowering evergreen that reaches upwards of 115 ft. in height with a 32 ft. crown radius.  The mango is a drupe (a fruit with a fleshy outer shell surrounding a pit...see peach).  The mango has great variation in size - 4 to 9 inches long and 2 to 4 inches in diameter.  The mango can weigh up to 88 ounces.  A multi-colored fruit, the mango is usually yellow, oragne, and red (the reddest part faced the sun, the yellowest the shade, with varying degrees of orange in between).  If you get a green mango (see examples in picture to left), give it back, it's not ripe.

There are over 1,000 recognized cultivars (official named varieties) of mangos, with names like "Van Dyke", "Spirit of 76", "Kensington Pride", "Turpentine", and "Huevos de Toro" (which means "Bull's Balls" based on the shape and size).  India is by far the largest producer of mangos - a crop that is increasingly becoming a "fair trade" item in many countries.

When I was in Burkina Faso for the first time in 2001, we planted over 400 trees.  About a third of these were mango trees.  Because they grow so large, they are an excellent source of shade - always a plus in dry in barren regions. They also draw and hold water in the nearby ground and provide obvious sustenance.  On a visit back in 2004, one of the mango trees that I personally planted outside of a church in the bush was still growing and still bearing fruit.

If you've ever had trouble cutting a mango, a vegan named Dino talks about how to properly cut one here.  It's interesting if you're into that sort of thing.

Friday is for Fruit

The peach is a fruit with a single seed encased in what is known as a "pit" or a "stone".  Cultivated peaches are divided into "freestones" or "clingstones" - depending on whether the flesh sticks to the stone or not.  Peaches have either yellow or whitish flesh (with red mixed into both varieties) and a velvety delicate skin.  Peaches with white flesh are typically very sweet with a slight acidity, while peaches with yellow flesh are usually acidic and tangy with a slight sweetness.  Low-acid white fleshed peaches are favored in most places worldwide (with the exception of Europe and North America, whose people apparently like their peaches acidic with a slight sweetness).  California, South Carolina (which sites the peach as it's state fruit), and Georgia (known as the "Peach State") produce the greatest number of peaches in the US.  Acceptable uses of this fruit include peach jam, peach cobbler, peach pie, and (my favorite) "canned peaches in syrup".

James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl is the charming story of an 8 year old boy named James, a giant peach, the giant creepy-crawlies he meets inside of this peach, and the adventure the have together.  Well worth the read...also available on Walt Disney Pictures Presents DVD.

I had a buddy who I played varsity basketball with in high school who was fond of nicknaming everyone...among other things (that won't get published here) he often called me "Peaches".  This stemmed (no pun intended) from a trip to the Jersey shore when we listened to The Presidents of the United States self-titled album on the car ride there (track #6 is titled...you guessed it..."Peaches").  And then while we were at the beach, we saw a car with a Georgia license plate that read...you guessed it again..."Peaches".

Friday is for Fruit

The grape is a fruit that grows on woody vines in clusters of up to 300.  Ranging in color from black to blue to gold to green to purple to red to pink to brown to peach to white, the grape is a tasty treat grown in vineyards around the world.

It is common knowledge (or should be anyway) that the best use of the grape is for making wine.  The fine, fine people who grow grapes for wine production are called viticulturalists.  Spain has the largest area of grape growth dedicated to wine making (followed by France and Italy - though my favorite wines at the present come from South Africa - mmmm...Goats Do Roam).  Grapes are also commonly used for juices, jams, and jellies.  Raisins are a lesser known yet appropriate use of the grape...but sometimes I feel as if raisins are just a waste of good wine.

I am, however, very fond of the California Raisins...below are three "I Heard it Through the Grapevine" commercials that ran in the 1980s (oh to be child again)...which is your favorite?

Playing with Your Food

A Grape Date

Raysin Charles Style

Friday is for Fruit

The blueberry comes from a flowering shrub native to North America and Asia.  The actual fruit is a small berry (5-16 mm in diameter) with a flared "crown" at the bottom.  They have a sweet taste when ripe and tend to be acidity (to varying degrees).  The state of Maine (where my wife and I honeymooned) produces one-quarter of all North American blueberries (while on our honeymoon we enjoyed things such as blueberry pancakes and blueberry beer).  My home state of New Jersey also produces a large quantity of blueberries. 

Blueberries are best enjoyed plain or in a bowl of milk and sugar accompanied by raspberries.  Blueberry muffins, blueberry pancakes, a blueberry pie, blueberry tea (with it's natural antioxidants) and the occasional blueberry beer are all appropriate uses of this fruit.  The blueberry picking season runs from May to October, with its peak in July.   

Speaking of picking blueberries...
I have a friend who dated a girl a few summers ago.  Before ever having a chance to meet this girl, my wife and I noticed that our friend was often absent from our frequent get-togethers with our friends.  When we asked about this, we were told, "Oh, he's out picking blueberries."  Apparently, when our friend and this girl first got together, they would go blueberry picking as a casual-type date.  His frequent absence, and the frequent response, "Oh, he's out picking blueberries", turned into a small joke amongst us.  When he was missing, we figured he was out with "Blueberry" - the name we gave to this girl whom we had never met.  Finally we did meet her, she actually had a name, but we decided to call her "Blueberry" anyway.  They are no longer dating, but the nickname stuck.

Also, if you're looking for a great children's book, might I recommend Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey (it is one of our family's favorites).

Friday is for Fruit

The raspberry is is a plant that produces a tart, sweet, red fruit (technically a raspberry is not actually a berry but an etaerio) in summer and early autumn.  It grows in forest clearings and fields and is fairly easy to grow (so I'm told). 

Raspberries are best enjoyed plain or in a bowl of milk with sugar sprinkled lightly upon them.  The creation of jam is an appropriate use of the raspberry as is its use in teas both hot and cold.

Blowing a raspberry is the process whereby one sticks out the tongue between the lips and blows so as to make a sound reminiscent of flatulence.  The most famous use of blowing a raspberry is in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  In one scene, John Clesse, acting as a Frenchman holding a castle, says "You don't frighten us, English pig-dogs! Go and boil your bottom, sons of a silly person. I blow my nose at you, so-called Arthur King, you and all your silly English k-nnnnniggets!" He then proceeds to blow a raspberry at the questing knights.

A common practice seems to be for parents to place their mouth on a young child's belly, arm, cheek, or other body part and then blow a raspberry in order to elicit laughter. In turn, even young babies can learn to do this and enjoy this interaction with others. For children, the common practice is to place their mouth on their inside arm or inner elbow while blowing a raspberry, generating unsolicited attention in the classroom. In this case, however, children rarely refer to this act as "blowing a raspberry", but rather "making farting noises".