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[MoonChild]

My favourite fruit is pineapple though I do adore tomato sandwiches. I like most varieties too.. Even the yellow ones!

 

[ps102]

Do you have the good volcanic soil in Crete? Vesuvius blew a big load.

No active volcanoes here, but we're very close to Thera (known as Santorini by most) which does have one. People worry about it all the time. And when the daily 300 earthquakes happened last winter, it was the prime worry—that it was getting ready to erupt. The whole island evacuated for a while but everything thankfully turned out okay.

The soil is great though. I grew watermelons last summer and they turned out amazing. They weighted 15kg each and they were about as juicy, crispy and sweet as they come. There is nothing worse than soggy watermelon. The texture is a big part of the experience.

 

[Homer Potvin]

No active volcanoes here, but we're very close to Thera (known as Santorini by most) which does have one. People worry about it all the time. And when the daily 300 earthquakes happened last winter, it was the prime worry—that it was getting ready to erupt. The whole island evacuated for a while but everything thankfully turned out okay.

The soil is great though. I grew watermelons last summer and they turned out amazing. They weighted 15kg each and they were about as juicy, crispy and sweet as they come. There is nothing worse than soggy watermelon. The texture is a big part of the experience.

It's probably volcanic. Watermelons are almost impossible to grow in my neck of the woods, but people have done it.

 

[Rath Darkblade]

Excel spreadsheets are the death knell of inspiration.

Excel spreadsheets are inventions of darkness.

I've been using Excel every day at work for the past nearly 20 years. Fortunately, I have a background in programming, so writing my own Excel formulae was never a problem.

Save me. Jesu, voca me cum benedictis.

Abandon all hope, O ye who enter the realm of Dark Chocolate.

Ah, Dark Chocolate. The only reason chocolate was put on this earth.

Come to the Dark Side. We have chocolate cookies.

Tomatoes are very polarizing. One of the most common ingredient deletions in food service, right up there with onions and anchovies. Aside from their sauce utility, I could take them or leave them. I might be one of the few Italian gardeners that doesn't bother with them, but that could be because everyone and their uncle is always giving them to me.

And yet, when tomatoes first made it to Europe (with the conquistadores), they were condemned by pretty much every learned person because they were thought to either be poisonous or the cause of leprosy.

Poisonous, I can sort-of-kind-of understand, since they come from the same family as deadly nightshade. The leprosy bit can only be explained if you look at it really, really cockeyed.

Tomatoes are truly the best. My life wouldn't be the same without them.

Agreed. But I recently saw a book on Amazon, being marketed as "serious historical fiction" (with emphasis on serious), set in the days of the Roman Empire ... where a Roman consul is having spaghetti with tomato sauce. Because what would Italian cuisine be without tomatoes, amirite?

I didn't look any further. Part of me wonders what other historical horrors might be unleashed, but part of me doesn't want to know. (Pinstripe suits and cigars a la "The Godfather" movies, maybe?)

 

[Louanne Learning]

I just read an interesting anecdote about a survivor of a Nazi concentration camp. With even the smallest pleasure, they would comment, "That's living." We should all have such appreciation.

 

[Homer Potvin]

be poisonous

I could see that as they cause extreme indigestion in certain people. Hell, if you haven't had a good tomato burp follow you around all day, you haven't lived yet!

 

[Riddley Walker]

I just read an interesting anecdote about a survivor of a Nazi concentration camp. With even the smallest pleasure, they would comment, "That's living." We should all have such appreciation.

Have yoh read Viktor Frankl's " Man's Search for Meaning"?

 

[Louanne Learning]

Viktor Frankl's " Man's Search for Meaning"?

I have, and I read the anecdote in his other book "Yes to Life"

 

[Username: required]

I won another game of Warhammer 40k! Death Guard for the win!!

 

[CatrionaGrace]

I've been using Excel every day at work for the past nearly 20 years.

Ah. The darkness in your soul is explained.

 

[Set2Stun]

I was surprised to learn how polarizing raw tomatoes are, especially on sandwiches. I always enjoy some (thin) sliced, fresh 'maters on my sammiches and burgs.

Once I learned that perch the fish is a predator and has the stripes to hide in a water vegetation. That knowledge of camouflage in nature explained me the stripes on watermelons. They hide, or else anyone can find and eat them.

I think most, if not all fruits & berries evolved to be delicious precisely so that animals would eat them and shit out their seeds everywhere.

 

[Schism]

I was surprised to learn how polarizing raw tomatoes are, especially on sandwiches. I always enjoy some (thin) sliced, fresh 'maters on my sammiches and burgs.

I think most, if not all fruits & berries evolved to be delicious precisely so that animals would eat them and shit out their seeds everywhere.

What ISN'T polarizing these days?

 

[Rigor Mortis]

What ISN'T polarizing these days?

The poles, North and South. They're just melting.

 

[Rath Darkblade]

The poles, North and South. They're just melting.

The people in North and South Poland are melting?

(Sorry, but now I have a mental picture of Polish people as an entire horde of Wizard-of-Oz-style Wicked Witches, all melting ... in unison.

And now I'd like a mental eraser, please)

 

[Louanne Learning]

My inbox is filled with interesting things to read. Got an article from Aeon that begins with this sentence -

If all the writing that claimed to ‘subvert’ our expectations actually did so, society would have long since learned to live without expectations.

 

[CatrionaGrace]

I think most, if not all fruits & berries evolved to be delicious precisely so that animals would eat them and shit out their seeds everywhere.

Have you ever read The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan?

 

[Username: required]

Fun fact: Nurgle's diseases are inspired by psoriasis.

 

[Louanne Learning]

one of the greatest inventions of all time is cheese.

 

[CatrionaGrace]

Yeah. Without it, we'd never have that fine phrase: "Cheese it! The cops!"

 

[Username: required]

Or Cheez-its.
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