The Great Gelato Challenge - Post game wrap up

TPP is surprised you could stand the suspense, but here it is, with time running out, with the lay-over in Rome coming to an end, so just before we departed Italy, Mrs. Phactor yanked victory from the freezer of defeat!  The little restaurant in one corner of the terminal had, much to Mrs. Phactor's surprise and delight, exactly 1 new flavor of gelato giving her exactly 30 different flavors of gelato in 30 days!  Now some people might want to put an asterisk because technically, based on labels, she had passion fruit gelato twice (and did TPP ever mention his wife's fondness for passion fruit?), but they most assuredly were different flavors, one sort of eh, and the other a brisk, tart-sweet, zing of passion fruit, more or less what we expect!  This unassuming little shop the Cantina del Gelato is about a block along Via dei Bardi from the Ponte Vecchio, but they have the best artisanal gelato. It however lacks the fancy glass display counters and colorful trays, but the aficionados know quality when they find quality. And with gelato, it is all about taste, not appearance.  Also, remember, tastes and licks just don't count, but a small cup with two flavors was allowed. Here's the gelato flavors rundown: coconut, espresso, lemon, mango, vanilla-bourbon, cherries & cream, hazelnut, peach (quite good), mora (blackberry, but sometimes mulberry is also called mora), caramel, pinenut, dark chocolate, passion fruit eh, mojito (lime mostly, hint of mint), mint chocolate chip, pistachio, white chocolate with bits, raisin, peanut butter (a surprise actually), passion fruit zing!, chianti (a real disappointment considering this was in Tuscany), pear & cheese (more like cheesecake with pear bits), mascarpone, tiramisu, strawberry, watermelon, plum, pineapple, chocolate chip, and egg cream (another surprise). You can figure out the problem right away; common and popular flavors are found repeatedly, and toward the end several gelato places failed to produce a new flavor, and the only person this did not disappoint was a nephew who got vanilla at each and every place, a different sort of survey. Mrs. Phactor played it very cagey selecting what she thought was the most unusual flavors first leaving many common flavors until toward the end, e.g., strawberry, which was bloody good strawberry as it turned out. 

The Gelato Challenge

As a partial compensation for having dumped on Italian bread, TPP will admit that gelato is great stuff. Personal challenges can be highly motivating, so far be it for TPP to ever suggest that Mrs. Phactor's gelato challenge is anything but a righteous endeavor. So here it is: 30 different flavors of gelato in 30 days, hey, and licks or tastes don't

count. The effort involved cannot be diminished, nor can the sacrifice.  Her major problem is that our Tuscan residence is quite a ways from the nearest gelato emporium. Today while visiting Florence, she made a major effort to regain her pace.  First, she started with a basic chocolate (now don't criticize, you can get distracted by the exotic flavors, so this is showing some deep strategy). Later when she needed a basic pick-me-up, and had located the Gelato Fanstastico, with a modest 50 flavors (but not black sapote - for that you must seek the Frosty Mango). At any rate this establishment had passion fruit gelato, one of our favorites, but it was not up to Frosty Mango standards although pretty good, and mojito. As much as TPP loves his topical fruit gelatos, he had to admit that the mojito was superb. But it's still no black sapote! We will see how this challenge progresses.  So far her new flavor favorite has been pine nut, pignoli, gelato. Anyone want to make suggestions for her? The comments are open. The image is not Mrs. Phactor, but clearly a well-focused gelato devotee. 

Plant ID the hard way - a quiz

One of the most common requests the Phactor gets is "can you identify this plant"? My professional alter ego once got a call from the local poison control center and they had a kid who had eaten a plant with, wait for it, red berries and green leaves. Wow, does that narrow it down to about 300 species. Are the leaves alternate or opposite? Silence; they are MDs after all. OK, have your security drive it over to my lab, and what arrives is one berry and one leaf. Fortunately that actually was enough, but it gives people the wrong idea about what is needed, besides one hell of a lot of experience, to ID a plant. So here's the latest challenge. Can you ID this plant from this photo from a reader in Saudi Arabia, which won't help a bit because as most of you know people seldom ever ask about native species? It doesn't help that the picture is out of focus, but no one said this was going to be easy. The genus seems pretty certain to me, but the reddish calyx, yellow corolla are a new combination in my experience. What are your thoughts?