Whaddya Think, Doctor Fink?

  Absolutely not. Blue pumpkins come from a big family rich in colors and types – way beyond the familiar orange. According to the Missouri Botanical Garden, pumpkins are part of a large and diverse plant family, Cucurbitaceae, which includes squash, gourds, watermelons, and cucumbers. Dr. Joe Masabni maintains in Agrilife Today, that pumpkins, whether blue, red, yellow, orange, or white are actually berries – fruit – “because anything that starts from a flower is botanically a fruit.” Pumpkins have

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Is it a typo? No. It’s a plant. The scientific name is althaea officinalis. It grows wild in Europe, Western Asia, and North Africa, along river banks, salt marshes, and swamps. Althaea Officinalis likes damp. The six-foot tall flowering plant was used over two thousand years ago by ancient Egyptians, Arabs, Greeks, and Romans. Technically, it’s the marsh variety of the mallow family. Get it? Marsh-mallow?   The ancient Greeks drained the marsh-mallow sap and used it as medicine to

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    Instant or gourmet? Tokyo or Cup O’ Noodles? Vegan or chicken? Ramen has taken over the world. Where did this yummy dish come from? Basically, ramen is noodles and broth. According to Stastista the World loves “Oodles of Noodles” to the tune of over 106 billion servings a year. That’s quite a mouthful. It all began in . . . China? Take a walk down Ramen Street, a subterranean mall nestled beneath Tokyo Train Station. You’ll find some

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    The Ice Age Glaciers gave us a gift. Ten thousand years ago, glaciers receded from what is now New England. They left bogs filled with sand, clay, and organic matter. Perfect for cranberries. What’s a cranberry bog? It’s soft, marshy ground with acidic soil. Low-lying cranberry vines thrive in that environment. The Native American tribe, Wampanoag Nation (“People of the First Light”) knew the value of the small, tart berries. They called them sasumauneaash or obimi, literally “sour

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    Potato salad – hot, warm, or cold from the fridge. It’s the salad that conquered the world. However, you can’t have potato salad without potatoes – so let’s start with that. Potatoes are native to South America. They were cultivated over 8,000 years ago by indigenous tribes, a staple in their diets. Potatoes were easy to grow, calorie-dense, and could be stored for a long time. Tribes mashed, baked, boiled, and stewed potatoes. (See the image of an