The Grown Diaries

On MAKE, “Early olive oil factory”:

This reconstruction of the earliest known olive oil factory demonstrates a simple yet ingenious process to extract olive oil from olives using pulleys, levers, and gravity decanting. This was much more effective than using mortar and pestle to make olive oil, typically used for small scale production. Dating back to the 6th century BC, this factory was located in the Ionian city of Clazomenae, on what is now the coast of western Turkey. This photo shows the press used to squeeze the olive oil out from burlap sacks filled with a paste of ground up olives.

I’m guessing part of the key to the Mediterranean Diet is the exercise you get pushing this olive press around. ;)

Yes, as if the produce section weren’t frightening enough, now you have to watch out for Brazilian Wandering Spiders wandering around the bananas.

TULSA, OK — The world’s deadliest spider found in a Tulsa grocery store. An employee at Whole Foods Market at 1401 East 41st Street found a Brazilian Wandering Spider wandering around in their produce section.

The store handed the spider over to biologists at the University of Tulsa who say that employee is lucky to be alive.

According to Wikipedia,

The Brazilian wandering spiders (Phoneutria spp.), armed spiders (”aranhas armadeiras”, as they are known in Portuguese) or banana spiders (not to be confused with the relatively harmless species of the genus Nephila) are a genus of aggressive and highly venomous spiders found in tropical South and Central America. These spiders are members of the Ctenidae family of wandering spiders.

The Brazilian wandering spiders appear in the Guinness Book of World Records 2007 as the world’s most venomous spiders and are the spiders considered directly responsible for most human deaths due to envenomation from spider bites.

So, yeah, look twice before picking up your next bunch. :)

Via Boing Boing.

Cuties-brand California Mandarins. These are a bit on the pricey side, but they’re quite tasty and juicy.

Spied this on a bike ride. A local church has a small grove of citrus trees…perhaps for an ongoing "Forbidden Fruit" lesson? ;)

It sounds like a good idea — disguise vegetables in more “palatable” forms and get the best of both words. An article in the LA Times this past week discusses this tactic with parents sneaking vegetables into their children’s diets…and how it can backfire.

“Parents seek ways to make kids eat vegetables”

So an increasing number of parents are loading the foods their kids will eat with produce they think they should be getting. And food makers are lending a hand, offering a growing array of processed foods that sneak vegetables and fruits into chips, juice and nuggets.

But some nutritionists and public health experts wonder if parents these days are relying too much on the sneak attack. They doubt if kids will ever develop a taste for vegetables in all their leafy glory if they are hidden in smoothies and macaroni and cheese. Some say this well-intentioned sneaking could produce kids less likely — not more — to eat greens.

Seems like a balanced approach would be best, combining sneaky and normal vegetable eating. It’s what I have to do with myself, and I’m nearly 40. :) Giving myself a bit of credit, however, nowadays I actually enjoy trying new foods and overcoming my aversion to old ones. This is a motivation that was entirely absent in my youth.

This NY Times article, “Yes, We Will Have No Bananas”, reports on the alarming idea that we may soon lose out on one of my (and America’s) favorite fruits: the banana.

ONCE you become accustomed to gas at $4 a gallon, brace yourself for the next shocking retail threshold: bananas reaching $1 a pound. At that price, Americans may stop thinking of bananas as a cheap staple, and then a strategy that has served the big banana companies for more than a century — enabling them to turn an exotic, tropical fruit into an everyday favorite — will begin to unravel.

Never mind $4 a gallon — I’ve seen upwards of $5 lately here in SoCal.

The immediate reasons for the price increase are the rising cost of oil and reduced supply caused by floods in Ecuador, the world’s biggest banana exporter. But something larger is going on that will affect prices for years to come….

Found via Cronaca