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Have You Tried...? News of New and Unusual Products Tomatillos Despite their name, tomatillos are not small tomatoes. Grown on a rambling vine, this small tart fruit ripens yellow to purple, but is generally harvested and used green.  Read more about Tomatillos Bamboo Shoots In Asia, marklet shoppers look forward the springtime emergence of fresh bamboo shoots the way those in the Americas look for asparagus, rhubarb or morel mushrooms. The aromatic, just-cooked shoots taste much like artichoke, corn and hearts of palm.  Read more about Bamboo Shoots Light Foil Light bulbs will soon be obsolete, replaced by thin, flexible sheets of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) used for everything from lighting tiles and strips in homes and offices to windows that can simulate sunrise and sunset  Read more about OLEDs Rechargeable Light Bulbs The world's first rechargeable light bulb stays illuminated for hours, even without electricity .  Read more about Rechargeable Light Bulbs Perry Pears Thought to be descended from wild hybrids, or "wildings," perry pears are the fruit of pear trees found primarily in the west of England.  Read more about Perry Pears Husk Cherry Tomatoes Also known as ground cherries or cape gooseberries or husk-tomatoes, these fruits are the smaller cousin of the tomatillo.  Read more about Husk Cherry Tomatoes Purple Tomatoes Scientists have expressed genes from snapdragon in tomatoes to grow purple tomatoes high in health-protecting anthocyanins - naturally occurring pigments found at particularly high levels in berries such as blackberry, cranberry and chokeberry.  Read more about Purple Tomatoes Quince Native to warm-temperate Caucasus region of southwest Asia, the quince is a small deciduous tree related to apples and pears that produces a bright golden yellow pome frut. Ripening in late autumn when the green fruit changes to its almost fluorescent-yellow hue with a hard flesh that is strongly perfumed.  Read more about Quince Strega The Italian word for witchcraft, Strega is also a fine liqueur of long-standing reputation. Dinstinctively yellow in color with a smooth and soft taste. Distilled by the family Alberti in Benevento since 1840,  it is produced in small pot stills and fermented in oak vats using a closely guarded concoction of herbs and spcies that includes saffron, which gives the liqueur its distinctive solar complexion.  Read more about Strega Poster Laser Combs Do laser combs really help stop hair loss and make hair grow thicker? There was a huge rumble in the “stop hair loss” products industry in January 2007 when the FDA approved the HairMax Laser Comb® for promotion of hair growth in males with androgenetic alopecia (Norwood IIA to V with Fitzpatrick skin types I to IV). The FDA has only approved two other products as solutions to help stop hair loss, so this was indeed a major breakthrough. Read more about Laser Combs  HairMax LaserComb Giant Miscanthus Giant Miscanthus, a tall, perennial grass, is the sterile cross between two plants, and a mule is the sterile result of a cross between a horse and a donkey. The $1 million question is whether Giant Miscanthus, like a mule, can take on a heavy load - in this case, the job of freeing the U.S. from its dependence on overseas petroleum. Giant Miscanthus is one of the leading candidates for cellulosic ethanol production.. Read more about Giant Miscanthus,  Dollar Coin A new U.S. $1 coin, bearing the likeness of George Washington, was pressed into circulation in time for 275th celebration of the first president's birthday. The new presidential $1 coin joins the Susan B. Anthony dollar, introduced in 1979, and the Sacagawea dollar, introduced in 2000, already in circulation. Read more about  the new dollar coin.  Pecan Oil Pecan oil will soon take its place alongside other cooking oils like corn, olive, peanut, canola and sunflower on grocer's shelves. "This healthy nut now has a new cooking product that, although not cheap, broadens the availability of pecan products on the market," said Wojciech Florkowski, an agricultural economist with the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. Read more about  pecan oil. Edible Ornamental Peppers Can you eat your peppers and enjoy looking at them too? Yes, you can. Since 1991, John Stommel, of the ARS Vegetable Laboratory, and Robert Griesbach, of the ARS Floral and Nursery Plants Research Unit, both in Beltsville, Maryland, have bred peppers to please both the eye and the palate.  The eye-catching Black Pearl, released in 2005 and honored as a 2006 All-America Selections (AAS) winner, attests to their success in developing new cultivars with both aesthetic and culinary appeal." Read more about  new edible ornamentals. Black Pearl pepper Body Jewelry Body jewelry is not merely a decorative fixture; it is also a personal style statement. You can use it to bring attention or to take away attention from a specific part of your body. It is quite in vogue these days and has been in existence since time immemorial. If you have the attitude and the panache you can carry of any kind of body jewelry. Read more about body jewelry Crystal Heart Belly Bar

Breeding Field Crops Dog World Food Lover’s Companion Catch Me If You Can based on the book Catch Me If You Can Specialty Foods direct from the maker Nontimber Forest Products in the United States Adaptation based on the book The Orchid Thief The Sweet Potato Cookbook Tried a new product? Share your experience! We'll post your observations here. Have You Tried... More Products Fountain Pens Calendula Chai Enoki Evergreens Huitlacoche Jackfruit Kiwifruit Luffa Soap Mallard Mesclun Olestra Paczki Pimenton Plantain Popolo Port Seaweed Sesbania Sweet-Potato Pasta Sweet Sorghum Tindora Tomatillos

SNAKEPLANT
(byGerald L. Klingaman, Univ of Arkansas Extension Horticulturist)

                 If all houseplants were as tough as the snakeplant, there would be no reason
                 for the foliage plant industry. This plant just won’t die.

                          There are two common versions of snakeplant, the green-leafed form has gray
                          cross-bands. The fleshy, sword-like leaves grow up to three to four feet long.
                          They arise from an iris-like rhizome. Its variegated counterpart, Laurentii, has a
                          yellow band to the leaves. The dwarf form, birdsnest snakeplant, grows in a
                          rosette only six inches high.

                          Snakeplant is a member of the century plant family, and like other members of
                          this family, hails from desert regions, in this case southern Africa. Old plants
                          occasionally flower, usually in late winter or early spring, on three-foot long stems
                          bearing small, tubular fragrant, greenish-white flowers that are more interesting
                          than beautiful.

                          Sansevieria is a good introductory plant for children because its toughness instills
                          confidence, its slow growth teaches patience and all sorts of interesting things can
                          be done with it.

                          One of the common names for sansevieria is bow-string hemp, taken from the
                         fact that Africans used the fibers from the plant to produce the strings for their
                          bows. Pulverizing a few leaves to extract the fibers might be a fun but somewhat
                          messy project. Snakeplants can also be propagated from leaf cuttings with leaves
                          cut into three-inch long segments and these then stuck in soil ? with the bottom
                          end down. In about three months, the plants will root and send up a new shoot. If
                          the variegated form is propagated, it will produce a normal green shoot because
                          the plant is a chimera ? a kind of mutation.

                          Snakeplants became popular across the U.S. because they were one of the
                          plants, along with African Violets, that Woolworth stores sold in the 1920's and
                          30's. The Florida foliage plant industry had its start growing these plants for
                          distribution to that chain.

                          Snakeplants survive in about as low a light level as you would encounter in the
                          home. They may not grow in these really dimly lit recesses, but they will sit there
                          just the same ? and with an occasional dusting ? will be as good as the day they
                          were placed there. They don’t need a lot of water and fertilization seems
                          optional, at least when the plant is inside. If you want your plant to grow, move it
                          to the patio in the summer and give it an occasional shot of fertilizer and an
                          occasional watering.

                          Keep snakeplants rootbound for best effect. I like to transplant my plants when
                         the expansion of the rhizomes cracks the clay pots in which they are confined.

 
MALLARD

(by Tom Isern, Professor of History, North Dakota State University, (701) 231-8339)

The waterfowl bonanza of the 1990s, owing to CRP habitat and the proliferation
of potholes on the northern plains, is producing some culinary crises—as in, what
to do with buckets of mallards? It's a crisis around my house, at least, and I don't
claim to be an expert waterfowler.

There are a lot of ducks out there, and they aren't very smart. I know, up and
down the plains mallards are considered wary and intelligent, but if you grew up
chasing gun-shy greenheads at the southern end of the flyway—Kansas, in my
case, not far from Cheyenne Bottoms—then these northern mallards, many
of them homegrown, seem to come in two varieties: dumb and dumber.

Fortunately they are great for the table. But given it's been about a generation
since ducks were so abundant on the plains, I'm afraid most of them are being
badly cooked. Just how should the well-dressed mallard appear for dinner?

Roasted is fine, but most people do a poor job of roasting because they've been
reading cookbooks written by people on the coasts who eat divers and never
had a good duck to work on. The assumption of most such instruction is that the
duck tastes bad and you should do something to sort of suck out the bad taste —
like putting some celery and onion inside and then throwing it away.

No, what you want to do is stuff the bird with good stuffing and then eat it. The
stuffing is important because wild duck flesh needs the moisture that steams out
of the stuffing. Use a moist stuffing. Sauerkraut and apples is a good stuffing
for ducks. So is regular bread stuffing, especially with chopped apples and
raisins in it.

Or here's an idea—do you have some buffalo berries growing around your place?
You'll find that after a hard freeze they are tart and tasty, as well as colorful.
Throw a handful of those into the stuffing.

Baste the roasting duck with something fruity. We use red currant syrup.

Just knowing how to roast a duck doesn't solve the whole problem because there
are so darned many of them. Here are a couple more alternatives.

Mallard noodle soup is better than chicken noodle. Mallards, unlike chickens,
have some taste to them. Just boil the mallard for stock (put some onions and
celery or lovage in there), season the broth, add the noodles, and finally add
back the duck. Thick homemade noodles are best for this because they hold their
own in a broth that has some flavor to it.

I'm saving the best for last—mallard mole. (For folks up north, that's pronounced
MO-lay.) Start out by boiling the mallard for stock in about a quart of water;
you'll have to turn it over because it won't be covered by the water.

The next part is easy—to the finished stock, add mole paste, which is available in
grocery stores that have any Mexican trade. I buy lots of jars of Pedro Lopez
mole paste whenever I'm in Topeka and have never had any trouble crossing
state lines with it. A little 6-ounce jar does the job for this recipe. Mash the paste
up in the broth and bring it to a boil. At this point I also add about a bulb's worth
of whole cloves of garlic. And then the mallard meat, cut into bites.

Meanwhile you've been cooking a batch of sopa de fideo, which is the Mexican
moral equivalent of angel-hair pasta. Serve the mole on the sopa. Or on rice, but
sopa's better. Flour tortillas on the side. No lefse.

A large evergreen, the jackfruit tree produces huge fruit weighing
up to 27 kilograms (60 pounds) each. Growing from nodes on the
trunk and old branches, the fruit is covered by a tough, greenish
husk and consists of many small, yellowish fruitlets. A mature
jackfruit tree can yield 200 to 500 large fruits each year.

The fruit is harvested both immature, as "vegetables" for curries,
or mature for its sweet, waxy flesh.  Seeds may be boiled, fried
and roasted; the fruit can be preserved by sun-drying and smoking.
Fruit husks and leaves can be fed to livestock. The wood of the
tree makes a top-grade timber for general carpentry, door frames
and windows.

Native to India, jackfruit was spread northward by traders to
Nepal and China and eastward as far as Papua New Guinea. Today,
jackfruit is so valued by rural Asian households that people call its
source  the "rice tree."

More on jackfruit from
California Rare Fruit Growers
Diethelm Travel
Epicurious

Many consumers are now finding products in the
grocery stores with the words olestra or olean on the
package label.

Olestra is a calorie-free fat substitute the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) recently approved. The most common
products consumers will find containing olestra are salted
snacks such as potato chips, corn chips, tortilla chips and
crackers.

The unique aspect of olestra, often marketed under the name
olean, is it cannot be absorbed by the body. Normally when
fats are eaten, the body's digestive enzymes break them
down, allowing them to be absorbed.

Olestra is too complex to be broken down by these enzymes
and cannot be absorbed as is. It simply passes through the
body unchanged.

"Often when people hear of a food that is fat-free or low-
fat, they think they can eat more of it without any
consequences," said Janice Hermann, Oklahoma State
University Cooperative Extension nutrition specialist. "While
foods containing olestra offer fat-free and reduced-fat options,
moderation should still be the key."

For those individuals who are trying to lower their dietary
fat intake, these foods do offer a wider variety of food
choices. However, if lower-fat foods are added to the diet
rather than serving as replacements for full-fat foods, a
reduction in total fat intake is unlikely.

Hermann pointed out some people who consume foods containing
olestra may notice some changes in their digestive system.
Because olestra passes through the body unchanged, some
people may notice digestive changes such as softer stools.

"These changes are similar to those experienced when eating
other foods that aren't well absorbed, like high-fiber
cereal," she said.

Olestra has been supported by more than 100 long- and short-
term studies that included more than 20,000 people before it
was approved by the FDA.

Olestra home page
Center for Science in the Public Interest's "Facts About Olestra"

A course, upright annual legume, sesbania is a fiber crop similar to alfalfa. Better suited as a cover crop than forage, it thrives in the same climates as alfalfa, but will also tolerate extremely wet conditions.

Duane Johnson, Colorado State University Cooperative Extension alternative crops specialist, is researching methods for processing sesbania into particle board, paper and even lumber.

Anything made from wood can be made from sesbania except, of course, a log. But pressed logs can be manufactured from the crop. Fiber-crop boards are strong enough to support a building, Johnson reported. Plant fibers can be mixed with plastics and other substances to make flexible or weather-proof products.

The interior stem fibers of sesbania, called a hurd, is soft and white and makes excellent peat for landscaping. In addition, it is an excellent fiber food-filler and, because it is cellulose, sesbania can be used in the production of camera film. The bast fibers, or outer stem fibers, are used to make paper and board products. An average crop yields about 4 to 4 1/2 tons per acre.

A blend of black tea and spices like cinnamon, cardamon, ginger, cloves or nutmeg, chai is a traditional Indian drink that's become popular in many North American coffee houses. It has a sweet and spicy flavor that goes well in many drinks, desserts and marinades.

Mixed with milk, it can be served hot or steamed like a latte. Others prefer it on ice as a cold drink or with ice cream as a kind of cooler.

Chai coolers are easy to make. Combine equal parts chai concentrate, milk, vanilla ice cram and crushed ice in a blender and mix until smooth.

Chai concentrate is available at specialty markets and natural food stores in both liquid concentrate and powder. Or, you can buy the ingredients to make chai from scratch and adjust the spices to match your own taste preferences.

The following recipes for making a chai blend are available at the Chai! website.

Chai from Scratch
Traditional Chai
Indian Railway Tea

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