...and today's fractal vegetable is:

...ROMANESCO.

(see photos below)

A member of the broccoli-cauliflower family, grown widely in northern Italy.

One of my students tried it when visiting family in Spain.

She'd taken a picture of it on her phone, which she showed to me and the rest of the class today.

I had to google it--wanted to know more about it...

Cool, eh?

(photo courtesy of localharvest.org)

And, the above, from this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanesco_broccoli

I'm a fan of unusual foods and love the forms/shapes/colors of produce...but somehow I'd never seen/heard of this before! I'm totally fascinated...I wonder if you can buy it here? Surely, the foodie-fication of America has led to some farmers' markets somewhere to offer this edible sculpture? Any of you seen/eaten it before?


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...and speaking of unusual foods--when living in Nicaragua, we were able to see a whole year-cycle of fruits/vegetables, including many things we'd never seen before, such as this:

So. Now you know how cashews grow. In trees, each nut being inside the comma-shaped carapace on the bottom of a pendulous bell-pepper-esque fruit. (No wonder they're relatively expensive, eh?)

And...how to say 'cashew' en español?
Take your pick, depending on where you want to say it:

Anacardo (en España)
Castaña de cajú (en Uruguay, Argentina y Chile)
Cajuil (En República Dominicana)

Marañón (en Perú, sureste de México, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Cuba y Centroamérica)

   (this is the word I learned when living in Nicaragua)

Merey, en Venezuela

Nuez de la India (en el norte y centro de México)

Pajuil (en Puerto Rico)

Jocote Marañon (En Guatemala)

¡Viva la variedad!