Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees

by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

The saba banana is shorter than the typical banana here in the States, and has a squared-off shape, blocky even.

I’m convinced I had the quickening—this baby jumping—earlier than expected, because my baby was enjoying the delicious foods of his Lola’s country: pancit, lumpia, duhat, mangoes, bangus, halo-halo on extra-hot days, rambutan already peeled for me by his father when I was just starting to waddle rather than walk.

They are some of the hardiest banana varieties on the planet, but farmers do have to worry over corm weevils and banana thrip infestations found in the fruit debris that gathers at the bottom of the trees.

Thirp?

At the exact stroke of midnight, children try to jump off furniture or jump as high as they can with coins in their pocket to grow taller and to be rich.

*bug eye emoji*

Strawberries are members of the rose family. Their botanical name is fragaria, which means fragrance.

When my husband and I were writing our wedding invitations, to delineate the date, we asked the stationer to inscribe on the cusp of berry season, as in, May 29, on the cusp of berry season. But all our friends knew that since we were married at the end of May in western New York, I really meant strawberry season.

That's some airy-fairy ish.

Ancient records reveal that Rome had strawberries all the way back to 200 BC. Romans used strawberries to treat depression, fever, and sore throats. The Greeks, however, had an aversion to any type of red fruit, believing it was poisonous or filled with mysterious powers.

The strawberry was a symbol for Aphrodite, the goddess of love, because of its heart shape and red color.

Madame Talian, a common fixture in the court of Emperor Napoleon, became famous for filling a tub with the juice of fresh strawberries for a distinctive and unusual bath. For this berry special dip, it was estimated she had servants gather twenty-two pounds per basin. Needless to say, this was not a daily occurrence.

The dessert of strawberries and cream was made famous by Thomas Wolsey in King Henry VIII’s court, and his second wife, Queen Anne Boleyn, had a strawberry-shaped birthmark on her neck. Several court advisers claimed this mark was proof of her being a witch, and cited that as yet one more reason for her to be beheaded.

Overkill much.

In 1843, growers in Cincinnati were the first to be able to ship chilled strawberries by placing blocks of ice on top of boxes containing the berries, forever making strawberries able to last longer—more time to savor that sweetness.

Vikings believed that when a baby died they ascended to the heavens in the form of a strawberry—the seeds of strawberries represented the souls of babies. For the Vikings, eating a strawberry was akin to eating a baby. Very frowned upon, to say the least.

I wanted to remember the exact shade of red when summer bursts with sugar and berry light.

We wouldn’t even have vanilla ice cream, vanilla perfumes, vanilla flavors and desserts without a boy—specifically a twelve-year-old enslaved child named Edmond Albius. Edmond’s mother died when he was a baby on the island of Réunion, off the coast of Madagascar, and the man who enslaved Edmond was a botanist who fussed and fumed over his vanilla orchids, which simply would not bloom.

Historians don’t know if Edmond was ordered to find a solution or if he came up with it on his own, but in 1841 Edmond developed by trial and error the technique that is still used today all over the world to pollinate vanilla orchids.

Edmond used a shard of bamboo to lift up the thin membrane, the rostellum, that separated the anther sac and the stigma of the orchid blossom so that they touched, but to give them a little extra connection Edmond smooshed them together with his finger and thumb.

About nine months later, just like the gestation period of a human baby, the vanilla beans are ready to be harvested, making this the only edible fruit of the orchid family.

You should be able to wind and tie a bean around your finger and be able to untie it again without it breaking—that’s how flexible it should be.

For a 4-ounce (1/2 cup) small bottle: You will need 2 beans and 1/2 cup of any plain vodka.

Madame Pompadour, mistress of King Louis XV, liked to have vanilla chocolate flavored with ambergris accompanied by celery soup and a handful of truffles at dinner.

Was she on crack?

Jefferson’s original recipe for ice cream called for a stick of vanilla, and he’s credited as the first American to write down an ice cream recipe.

But because the production of vanilla is so costly, scientists have experimented with creating vanilla substitutes. One of these substitutes is castoreum—a secretion from the anal glands and castor sacs of beavers, that use it to stake their claims and spray their dams in a pond, marking territory.

Wow

Aromatherapists say the smell of vanilla can create feelings of comfort, peace, and contentment.

The fruit of the sugar palm is called kaong, a treasure of Filipino fruit salads and one of my favorite ingredients in halo-halo.

Even though their kid was missing for almost half an hour, the parents didn’t say thank you. Even frowned a bit when I brought her back to them.

Wtf?

It originated in Sudan, where early watermelons had white flesh not nearly as sweet as the ones we’ve come to know and love since then.

A farmer I spoke to said that to grow a sweet and healthy watermelon, you need four things: water, sun, bees, and a well-drained sandy soil.

Combined with the still-wet fields and rain puddles from earlier that day, we were, as they say, a hot mess trying to eat this fruit, which is over 90 percent water. (It’s no surprise that travelers crossing the Kalahari would once hollow out the sturdy exteriors, fill them with water, and carry them as canteens on their journeys.)

If you’re at a farm, you can also inspect the tendrils or the pigtails of the vine—if they’ve turned brown near the melon, it’s ripe for picking.

Black pepper is known as black gold, or the king of spices. Black peppercorns are made when the fruit is harvested right before ripeness, and they have the most flavor of all the types of peppercorns.

In ancient Rome, pepper was a status symbol, and the wealthy used pepper in desserts as a way to flaunt their fortune.

The French sometimes paid their rent in peppercorns, a fragrant reckoning each month.

Craziness.

In Bermuda, the annual Peppercorn Ceremony has taken place for more than two hundred years. During this event, Freemasons present the governor of Bermuda with one peppercorn on a cushioned silver platter in exchange for their rent of the Old State House.

Jars of peppercorns were found in Egyptian tombs, and slipped into the nostrils of Ramses II, who was mummified in 1213 BC. Cleopatra is said to have had lotions made with black pepper to rub into her skin.

What the *actual* hell.

In the Middle Ages, a pound of black pepper could free a serf, and many young maidens were married off with a black pepper dowry instead of gold or farm animals to plow a field.

By increasing serotonin, which regulates mood, pepper is also believed to help anxiety disorders and depression.

What I heard in the middle of the night was the great migration taking place—birds leaving Central and South America and making good time to their nesting spots under the cover and safety of night.

Once upon a time I was considered ancient. Almost thirty and not married. So old, too picky, I heard aunties say in the kitchen.

Turns out, students love professors who are twenty-six and who genuinely care about them.

Agreed.

In the early 2000s, the miracle fruit berry started making headlines with its novel aftereffects.

How come I never heard of this?

After eating this berry, for about thirty minutes, everything you eat becomes sweet. A lemon is as sweet as an orange, a saltine cracker tastes like a cookie.

There are suggested foods for “flavor tripping,” but the ones we were served at the restaurant were: pickles, carrots, goat cheese, Guinness beer, rings of fresh red onion, limes, and salt and vinegar chips.

Forget leaf blowers. The only buzz-saw-drone noise I can tolerate in fall is the whir of wasps slow-swirling drunk, knocking into one another in an apple orchard.

Nope.

There was once a time on this planet when all fruit other than berries were called apples. Tomatoes were love apples, dates were finger apples.

Why?

Scholars now believe the famous golden apples of Greek mythology were actually oranges.

The one I remember most vividly from my childhood was served by a now-defunct strip-mall restaurant run by the kindest Greek family. The only restaurant I’ve ever seen my father comfortable in. The waiters never made fun of his accent, or acted like they couldn’t understand him. Nobody ever stared at us.

The tree that was cause for all this celebration is monoecious, meaning the male and female flowers on a pecan tree grow separately at different locations on the same tree, unlike most other fruit.

The very word pecan is from the Algonquin and means “nut requiring a stone to crack.”

Native to the United States, they’ve become our most successful homegrown tree nut crop.

There are over a thousand varieties of pecans, which come in a range of sizes, including mammoth, extra-large, large, medium, small, extra-small, and granular.