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Money doesn't grow on trees, but that doesn't stop a group of renegade agriculturists from turning public trees into a provider for bountiful harvest by grafting fruit-bearing branches.
Meet the Guerilla Grafters:
What makes them guerrillas is the fact that this grafting is illegal. As the group’s Tara Hui explains, “people think of fruit trees as kind of a nuisance.” That’s both because of the mess they might create in the form of rotten fruit and the vermin they might attract in the form of rats. Depending on the species you’re using, grafting might also run afoul of patent law. The Guerrilla Grafters address the first two problems by making sure each grafted tree has a “steward” who can monitor and take care of it.
Andrew Price wrote the article on Fast Company: Link
This photo is actually named Bunch of Winers. Tom Magliery used Wite-Out and a Sharpie to give these fruits their personalities. See a collection of a variety of funny fruits from many artists at Kuriositas. Link -via the Presurfer
(Image credit: Flickr user mag3737)
Move over, Miss Chiquita, there's a new fruit-n-veggie headress in town ... Behold the Hanayui series by Japanese flower artist Takaya over at Dezeen blog: Link - via Notcot
Up until now, only a few species of primates and birds have shown the ability to understand the concept of the future. But now, a type of weasel, the tayra, has shown it can plan for the future. The weasel has been observed gathering up unripe plantain bananas and hiding them away for later enjoyment when they are ripened. While plenty of critters hide food away for later, the tayra is special in that it selects bananas that are not ripe and returns when the fruit is ready.
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Fruit Jackets Trio – $27.95
Are you looking for a fun way to protect your sweet summertime fruit? You need the Fruit Jackets from the NeatoShop. This fantastic little trio comes with a apple, banana, and pear cover. This item was recently featured on the Today Show as one of the hot summer items you’ll be lovin’.
Fruit Jackets are also sold individually.
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more fabulous Kitchen Stuff.
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You’ve probably seen kits that will carbonate your drinks at home. Did you know you can do the same thing with fruit? Fizzy fruit? Rich Faulhaber made a machine to do it, and says the kids love fizzy grapes, oranges, and blueberries. He shows you how you can do it yourself at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories. Link
(Image credit: Flickr user Martin LaBar)
SUPREME WISDOM
Technically, green peppers, zucchini, cucumbers, and tomatoes are all fruits. But don’t try telling that tot he U.S. Supreme Court. Per the 1893 case Nix vs. Hedden, the court decided tomatoes were veggies and therefore subject to the vegetable tariff. What was the Supreme Court’s reasoning? Tomatoes have to be vegetables, because they’re usually served with dinner, not dessert.
DEATH BY APPLE SEED
Turns out that when Mom told you not to eat apple seeds, she had good reason. From peaches to cherries, many fruit seeds contain cyanogenic glycosides, which turn into cyanide gas during digestion. In the last 50 years, at least nine people in Turkey have died of cyanide poisoning from gorging on apricots. The bitter almond, however, is the most lethal fruit. Experts estimate that eating 50 bitter almonds in one sitting will kill an average-size adult.
EASY AS PIE
When Sony Music complained that Warrant’s 1990 sophomore album didn’t have a radio-friendly single, lead singer Jani “The Name and the Haircut Say Woman, but I Swear I’m a Guy” Lane wasted no time correcting the problem. Within 45 minutes, Lane had written that great ode to double entendres, “Cherry Pie”. In a damning indictment of early 1990s taste, it quickly rose to No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. As of 2006, you’ll be surprised to learn that Warrant is still a band. [ed note: the band is still recording, but Jani Lane is no longer a member.]
THIS SCRIPT IS BANANAS!
According to David Niven’s book Bring on the Empty Horses, when screenwriter Charles MacArthur asked Charlie Chaplin for some advice, it went something like this:
“How, for example, could I make a fat lady, walking down Fifth Avenue, slip on a banana peel and still get a laugh?” he asked. “It’s been done a million times. …What’s the best way to get a laugh? Do I show first the banana peel, then the fat lady approaching, then she slips? Or do I show the fat lady first, then the banana peel, then she slips?”
“Neither,” Chaplin responded. “You show the fat lady approaching, then you show the banana peel, then you show the fat lady and the banana peel together. Then she steps over the banana peel and disappears down a manhole.”
PUN FOR THE ROAD
Talk about your gallows humor. In 1928, condemned killer George Appel was strapped into New York state’s electric chair and asked if he had any last words. His parting remarks? “Well, gentlemen, you are about to see a baked Appel.”
W.C. FIELDS FOREVER
Actor and comedian W.C. Fields was nothing if not charming about his drinking. He once asked, “What contemptible scoundrel has stolen the cork to my lunch?” Fields was known to drink two bottles of gin a day -while in rehab. He didn’t brag about his drinking on movie sets, though. Instead, he referred to the martini in his thermos as “pineapple juice.” One day, someone on the set decided to play a prank. After taking a swig from his thermos, Fields shouted, “Somebody put pineapple juice in my pineapple juice!”
YOU CAN’T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT
Before Stanley Kubrick got his hands on Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange, Burgess optioned the novel’s movie rights to Mick Jagger for a few hundred dollars. Jagger wanted to make the film with the Rolling Stones playing the roles of the “droogs.” Fortunately for Kubrick, Burgess, and all of humanity, Jagger later dropped the idea.
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The article above was published in the July – August 2006 issue of mental_floss magazine, reprinted here on Neatorama with permission.
Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ extremely entertaining website and blog!
Just how well do you think you know the fruits of the world? That’s the subject of today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. It’s harder than you think! I made several wild guesses, and I ended up with a score of 55%. Link
The Buddha’s Hand is an unusual fruit rarely found in American grocery stores, but common to parts of China and India. It’s so named because its fingers are said to represent the hands of the Buddha praying:
In China the fruit is often carried in the hand or simply placed on a table in the home to bring those who live their good luck, happiness and long life. Its Chinese name, fo-shou, means exactly that when it is written alongside other characters. As well as culinary and household use the fruit, before maturity, is often prescribed as a tonic.
Link via The Presurfer | Photo by Flickr user gumdropgas used under Creative Commons license
(L) Watermelon (M) Orange (R) Artichoke
The blog Inside insides is rather sparse on the details, but I suppose you don’t really need anything more than the terse tagline of "Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Foods". Take a look and marvel: Link – via metafilter
Fruit Jackets – $9.95 ea ($27.95 for the trio) at the NeatoShop
Eating fruits every day is healthy, but the trip to the office can be downright dangerous for your fruit. So to help save your apples, bananas, and pears from bumps and bruises, you need this: Fruit Jacket, a form-fitting neoprene "jacket" for fruits! (Bonus: it also protescts your fruit’s modesty!)
Silly? Absolutely! Useful? Perhaps – but if it gets you (or your loved ones) to eat their serving of fruit a day, then I’m sure it’s worth it!
Links: Apple Fruit Jacket, Banana Fruit Jacket, Pear Fruit Jacket | All Three at the NeatoShop
BTW, we’ve added a lot of new and neat items to the NeatoShop. Please take a look
It looks like some belated April Fool joke but the Jabuticaba is a real tree which bears fruit on its trunk. It gives it a rather odd appearance but the fruit is tremendously popular in South America. People eat them like they were grapes.
It is also a popular ingredient in jellies and is also juiced to make a refreshing summer drink. What is more it can be fermented and made in to wine and strong liquor. After three days off the tree the fermentation will begin so sometimes, there is no choice. Honestly.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by taliesyn30.
The picture above sure looks like a minuscule watermelon doesn’t it? Just imagine biting into it, skin and all, to discover it is entirely tomato-y though. That’s because the adorable creation is actually made from a green zebra tomato shell filled with tomato gel and topped with black sesame seeds. It might not be the most productive way to spend your time, but the effect is certainly fascinating.
Link Image Via Playing With Fire And Water
Most of us think of sweet produce as fruit and not-sweet garden foods as vegetables, with the exception of the tomato because that’s been argued over so much. But which plant foods are scientifically fruits, and which are vegetables?
A fruit — a ‘true fruit’ — is one where all tissues are derived from the plant ovary and this alone. This includes peas. Whereas strawberries, for example, also include some of the flesh from the peg that holds the ovary, disqualifying them from fruit status. The apple gets its carpels involved as well as the ovary, leading to a kinky pome. ‘True berries’ are also ‘true fruits’, but not the other way round. Grapes, currants (red and black), elder- and gooseberries are all proper upstanding berries which will not deceive you or smuggle themselves into your house in pies before stealing your silver while you sleep.
Whatever you call them, you should have five servings a day, and eat a variety of different whatever-they-ares. Link -via Scribal Terror
Have you ever seen a neighbor’s fruit left unharvested, all those fruit wasted? Think there’s a better way? Though neighbors trading apples for plums isn’t exactly new phenomenon, the Internet is changing the way and fueling growth in the "underground economy" of trading fruit.
Kim Severson of The New York Times has an interesting article about this trend:
All over the country, the underground fruit economy is growing. At new Web sites like neighborhoodfruit.com and veggietrader.com, fruit seekers can find public mulberry patches in Pennsylvania and neighbors willing to trade blackberries in Oklahoma.
In Royal Oak, Mich., a woman investigated how to start a fruit exchange modeled after Fallen Fruit (fallenfruit.org), an arts group that designs maps of accessible fruit growing in Los Angeles neighborhoods.
In Alaska, cooks used Facebook to find willing donors of backyard rhubarb, the first dessert crop that grows after the long winter. In Columbia, S.C., university students pulled spare peaches from orchards and donated them to a local food bank.
Supporters of this movement hold two basic principles. One, it’s a shame to let fruit go to waste. And two, neighborhood fruit tastes best when it’s free.
Link – via squealingrat
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by squealingrat.
These cucumber growing molds from Japan are so fun! They would be great for bento boxes or in salads and sushi. I bet you could also use them for zucchini. I want one!
By day Barry Snyder is an Erie, Colorado handyman. But in his spare time he is a unique artist who has garnered media attention from across the country. For over 30 years Barry has collected Price Look Up stickers to use as color chips in his own form of mosaic art. On average his creations take 6 months to complete and are comprised of up to 4,000 stickers.
Check out this short video from Food Network’s Unwrapped that profiles Barry Snyder and gives viewers a look into his world of sticker art.
Link – via whitespace
From the Upcoming Queue, submitted by whitespace.
Professional poker player Chris Ferguson can cut bananas and watermelon just by throwing a playing card. Pretty impressive, but wouldn’t it be easier to just use a knife?
I kid, I kid.
An owner of a Fuji apple orchard printed up custom stickers of iPods and the Apple logo. He then put the stickers on his Fuji apples while they were still young and on the trees.
A month later after the apples had matured, he removed the stickers.
I’ll have to try this myself next year! Link -via Grow-a-Brain
It comes with a non-slip surface, a three-level color indicator system for fast and accurate quality information, an innovative curved design, and much more.
