Benefits Of Jujubes
Author: Ola Thomas | Category: Food Facts, Uncategorized
Jujubes are a very interesting fruit with an even more interesting history. From the Rhamnaceae or Buckthorn botanical family, they’ve been cultivated in China for more than 4,000 years. There are at least 400 jujube varieties, successfully developed for their distinctive characteristics – principally varieties best for eating fresh and others for drying to attain a chewy, date-like consistency.
While jujube trees are extremely hardy and can flourish in even extreme temperatures with as little as eight inches of rainfall a year, they prefer sunny over shady areas…
12 Jan 2018
Thriving even in frost, kale is an easy-to-grow green that keeps on giving: cut the smaller, paler green leaves to anchor or mix into fresh garden salad; use the larger, dark greens for stir-fries, pizza topping, or soup, while the plant keeps right on growing.
An aquatic plant found near springs and slow-moving streams, watercress is an often-overlooked, leafy green food source that is a close cousin to mustard greens, cabbage, and arugula. An attractive, succulent plant, watercress bears small, round, slightly scalloped leaves, which, in summer, produce tiny white flowers that become small pods with two rows of edible seeds. Watercress has been cultivated in Europe, Central Asia, and the Americas for millennia for use as both food and a medicine…
What most people know about water chestnuts, sometimes more specifically called Chinese water chestnuts, are the basics: they’re white, have a crunchy texture and a fresh, mild taste, and are often used in Chinese cooking. In the West, most who use the small, round “corms” – short, underground, slightly bulbous stem bases – in their culinary endeavors buy them either whole or sliced in a can.
For many people, summertime is simply incomplete without serving a delicious array of scrumptious green vegetables. But here’s an idea: why not take a break from the usual leafy green salads, and dig into a plateful of succulent zucchini instead?
While yams appear very similar to sweet potatoes, they’re quite different. In fact, they’re not even related. Yams belong to the Dioscoreae or morning glory family, while sweet potatoes are from the genus Convolvulaceae. Yams (from the African word “nyami,” meaning “to eat”) have only one embryonic seed leaf, while sweet potatoes have two.
Spanish conquistadors had their own historian, Oviedo, who reported positively about avocados discovered in Mexico around 1519. But this interesting fruit has graced Central and South America for perhaps 10,000 years, according to the avocado-inspired drawings and artifacts found in early Aztec settlements.
If you ever see a salad green referred to as “rocket,” it’s simply another name for arugula, or roquette in French. Yet another brassicaceae along with kale and cauliflower, its delightfully pungent leaves have been cultivated in the Mediterranean since time was recorded. As such, arugula is a perennial favorite in Italian cooking.
A member of the sunflower family of vegetables, the artichoke is actually a perennial thistle. First cultivated in the Mediterranean region, artichokes became scarce after the fall of the Roman Empire. They made a comeback in Italy in the 1500s, and then appeared in the Americas after introduction by French and Spanish gardeners.
Ripe and golden with a luscious flavor and velvety surface – or a more intense shade when dried – apricots are closely related to peaches, plums, and nectarines. Grown on deciduous trees, they’re actually a drupe, with the seed central to the surrounding fruit and each having a fairly uniform size. They’re sometimes overlooked as a fruit, perhaps because there are so many fruits to choose from in today’s markets.