Originally published in the Journal de Montréal on November 24, 2012.

You’ve probably never come across it in the grocery store, but chances are, you’ve eaten it in a Chinese restaurant: we’re talking about Chinese broccoli, or gai-lan, a floret-less broccoli consisting of thick stems with long green leaves and small yellowish edible flowers. It tastes like broccoli, but is a little stronger and with a hint of bitterness.

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Those of you who follow this blog regularly, already know that pumpkins are often featured here.

Here’s some recent news about pumpkins:

Largest pumpkin ever
The world record for largest pumpkin has been broken this week at the Topsfield fair, in Massachusetts, with a specimen weighing in at a whopping 2,009 pounds (912 kg). The heaviest pumpkin title was previously held by a Quebecer grower, whose pumpkin was weighing only (!) 1818,5 pounds, about 825 kg.
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The Environmental Working Group (EWG), a nonprofit organization that advocates for policies that protect global and individual health, has published the 2012 version of their Shoppers’ Guide to Pesticides in Produce. Their results are based on chemical tests carried out by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and take into account how people typically wash and prepare produce – for example, apples were washed and bananas peeled before testing.

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A consortium of 300 plant geneticists from 14 countries has spent the last nine years decoding the tomato genome in the hope of breeding better ones. Their results were finally published online Wednesday in the journal Nature.

The most amazing thing is that the tomato turns out to possess about 32,000 genes, some 7,000 more than a human being… According to the authors, this does not mean that tomatoes are more sophisticated than us, but that they have chosen a different way for managing their cells. Humans make heavy use of a technique called alternative splicing, which allows the components of each gene to be assembled in many different ways, so that one gene can produce many products.

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Originally published in the Journal de Montréal on April 28, 2012.

Chicory and escarole were originally used by Egyptians and Greeks, mostly as medicinal plants. The Romans ate the leaves and roots, which they also fed to the sacred geese of the Capitol.

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Originally published in the Journal de Montréal on March 24, 2012.

Beans have been cultivated for over 8,000 years in Central and South America, and they were immediately adopted by Spanish “conquistadors” who valued their easy transport and storage, as well as the fact that they are highly nutritious. From Europe, these legumes then quickly spread to Africa and Asia, where they have been part of the staple diet ever since.

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Originally published in the Journal de Montréal on March 10, 2012.

Kale, also know as borecole (from the Dutch ‘boerenkool’ for ‘farmer’s cabbage’) doesn’t grow in the shape of an apple like other varieties of cabbage, but rather in branches.

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