Today's Post is Brought to You By The Letter "A" and Hippocrates

"Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food." - Hippocrates    

It's not often that you find a non-fiction tome that grasps you so much that you can't put it down. The Fruit Hunters by Adam Leith Gollner is one such book!   His writing is witty, informative and thought provoking.  I love this paragraph will justly sums up the state of our purchasable perishables, pg.14

"Having commodified nature, we're eating the shrapnel of a worldwide homogeneity bomb.  I've purchased identical apples in Borneo, Brazil, Budapest and Boston.  Many of the fruits we eat were developed to shop well and spend ten days under the withering glow of fluorescent supermarket lights.  The result is Stepford Fruits:  gorgeous replicants that look perfect, feel like silicon implants and taste like tennis balls, mothballs or mealy, juiceless cotton wads."

I was alerted to many new terms such as biophile, agtourism, votary, fructology and more.  Did you know that in medieval times, a woman would ensconce a peeled apple in her armpit immersing the apple with her scent which she then proffered to her man!  Perhaps I'll try this on John and see if there is any merit to it!

John has an unwarranted dislike for rhubarb and insists it is a weed and refuses to eat "weed" pie.  It gave me great pleasure to inform him that I read that rhubarb was legally deemed a fruit in 1947.   The tomato dilemma?  Fruit or veg?  Tomatoes legally became a vegetable in 1893 by US Supreme Court!!  That's your trivia for the day!

The author raves about many ultra exotic fruits, one being the mangosteen.  It just so happens that I found mangosteens in our local grocery store.   Mangosteens have a purplish, maroon  hard outer shell and what resembles a slug is the prize you find inside.  I literally saw a snail or slug in the grass the other day that reminded me of this fruit!  Clearly Adam Leith Gollner has a more extensive palate for appreciating the ultra exotic fruit paradigm!

This book inspired me to not only try new fruits but lit a fire in me to yearn to travel to remote areas to sample the splendor of little known varieties.  Books have a habit of grafting travel concoctions in my mind.  I once read "Northern Exposures" by Eric Walters and proposed a once in a lifetime trip to Churchill, Manitoba to see the polar bears!  My family didn't share my enthusiasm.  "Fruit Hunters" had me dreaming of travelling to the Seychelles to see a coco-de-mer fruit.  I've recently heard about 'fruit porn', but this fruit takes the cake as far as food porn goes!  There is both a female and male plant - disturbingly anatomically correct!  Here's a photo I googled to show you!  See what I mean!!

In addition to reading "Fruit Hunters", I am reading the Reader's Digest compilation "Foods That Harm, Foods That Heal".  This book lists foods alphabetically and informs us of the pros and cons for each entry.  So, I really wish that my kids could have been with me this week while perusing the aisles of the grocery store.  For a chore I once loathed, I've managed to make the experience both challenging and fun!  This week's food itinerary involved purchasing healthy foods beginning with the letter "A".  "A" is for apple, asparagus, amaranth grain, arugula, apple, apricot, asiago cheese, artichoke, acorn squash, agave nectar, almonds (I already had these at home!) and the little known, elusive atemoya!

I read that a mixture of mashed up avocado, jojoba oil and wheat germ oil applied to the scalp does wonders for your hair shafts, so I was even prepared to try this!  However, when my search for these oils was looking destitute, I was able to locate some but the cost was exorbitant!  The jojoba oil was $38.99 and the wheat germ oil was $25.99 and that's before taxes!  Somehow I knew John would totally flip his lid if he found out I spent that much on an "A" experiment so I hung my head low and walked out empty handed!  If anyone knows where I can score a sample of each please let me know (the recipe only requires 1tsp of each!).

Yesterday I began sweetening my coffee with the agave nectar in lieu of cane sugar cubes.  When I returned from a much needed massage, I enjoyed a snack of fresh apricot and a handful of raw almonds.  After the kids got home from school we each tried a bit of the atemoya.  I admit I had to google atemoya to figure out what you are supposed to do with it first.  Good thing  I did too, because otherwise I wouldn't have known that the seeds are in fact toxic.  The outward appearance of the atemoya resembles that of an artichoke.  My google search revealed that the taste of the fruit was reminiscent of pina colada.  I love pina colada so I couldn't wait to try it.  When you open the atemoya, you see that the pulp is white and there are black seeds hidden inside 'pods' that remind me of garlic cloves.  The texture of the pulp looked and felt like a cooked, flaky white fish like tilapia.  The taste didn't live up to my pina colada expectations but it was certainly more appealing than the mangosteen!  For me it tasted more like a naturally sweetened milk - only in more of a solid form. For dinner the kids and I each tried the acai berry juice!

I'm getting anxious about my next appointment.  My latest blood pressure results  were 145/72, 134/81 and 126/73 - not bad.  My anniversary gift from John (new running shirt) was put to good last weekend - and I completed the challenge and did 17 laps of the track.  I ran most of them with walking breaks in between and John supportively ran right beside me!  Now that school in full swing again, the tracks are being utilized for football practice, otherwise I would have continued during the week.  My weight isn't going anywhere unfortunately and the scale is trying to tell me that I've converted more fat into muscle - right???

But never fear, for I will be seeing Colin Firth in the flesh tonight!!!  I scored tickets to see his new film "The Railway Man" at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) tonight and again on Sunday to see "Devil's Knot"!  I think that is the medicine Hippocrates intended for me!!!  I have photos to attach to this post, but will do that later when I have more time - after all, I must prepare and arm myself with a Sharpie to procure an autograph!!!