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

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!

Link

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.

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.

Link [YouTube] – via Pusha