Stuff you never think about - Gum Arabic

You've probably never ever thought about gum arabic, so it was quite a surprise to TPP, who teaches about plant products like gum arabic, to find such a good article on the subject (The Guardian).  It's a bark exudate of an Acacia tree.  Plant gums do many things; some are elastic and are chewed, but the more important ones are emulsifiers.  They have several functions: they help ingredients blend together and stay blended, the help preserve flavor, and they help things adhere to each other.  You encounter them daily in various uses.  Gum arabic helps the printers ink stick to the pages of your newspaper.  And gum arabic is used in the formulation of sodas, including the big two: Coke & Pepsi.  Here's the problem: where does gum arabic come from?  A lot or even the majority of the world's supply is harvested from wild plants in the Sudan, and on an international level this vital commodity could be financing terrorism, assisting international arms deals, and promoting civil wars.  Yes, companies try to stay away from such things, but they still need their gum arabic.  To avoid any issues of who, what, when, or where, Coca-Cola Inc. buys purified gum acacia from European sources without any regard for where it came.  The classic, "Hey, who knew?" approach to what may be happening a couple of steps down the supply line.  Such is the problem with international commodities today.  It's not a simple buyer-seller enterprise, and it's hard to know who you may be financing with your purchase.  So good to see an article about this. 

Strange and wonderful new things

One of the primary goals of teaching economic botany is to put a lot of new things in front of students, strange and wonderful things, new things to tickle the old curiosity.  The problem is that you never quite know what will and what will not be amazingly interesting.  Today's lab topic was legumes.  While shopping last night TPP was quite surprised to see fresh faba beans something he's never seen in local markets before.  Well, the students will have fun with those thinks he, but little or no interest in such a novel item, although a colleague passing through the lab took time to open a pod and mess with the huge bean inside.  Today's smash hit, a double header actually, were spicy masala peanuts from an Indian grocery and jicama.  Jicama (HIH-kah-muh) is a pretty unusual vegetable from a bean, the yam bean, in a family largely known for fruits and seeds.  These large "tubers" or rather a fleshy storage root has quite tasty, crunchy flesh; you peel off the corky skin.  Makes for a nice alternative to carrot sticks or in salads for "clunch".  For reasons that cannot be explained this was a big hit with this year's class.  The yam bean (Pachyrhizus erosus) is a neotropical native, a vine with perennial storage root.  Look at the generic name; pachy = thick (pachyderm - thick skin) and rhizus = root, pretty descriptive.  The quick lentil curry was largely consumed as well, of course, when you lab meets just after lunch, anybody who skipped eating is well prepared to try something new. 

Cooking cookies with a biologist

So here's the situation, the hydrogenated Glycine max oil had been creamed together with crystallized, purified vacuolar sap from Saccharum, two sterile ovules of the domesticated Asian jungle fowl, and an ethanolic extract of fermented fruits of the Vanilla orchid, so it was time to stir in the shredded endosperm of Cocos nucifera, the chopped embryo of Juglans regia, and the candified, ground seeds of Theobroma cacao, only to find that the most critical ingredient, finely powdered endosperm of Triticum spp., was insufficient to the task at hand. Now some 5 hours earlier that the Phactor's vehicle was checked into an out patient auto center to get new tires, so fortunately the people's grocery is only about a 20 min walk away, but walking home with 11 lbs of ingredients indicated the utility of having at least a cart. The preparation time certainly did not take into account not having all the ingredients on hand. Still Ms. Phactor and F1 seemed to approve.

Demonstration of Student Interest and Dedication

At the end of a semester students will often seek extra work (not having done the regular assigned work) or some other means of enhancing their grade. But never before has one of them offered to show their interest in the subject area and their dedication to the course material by having themselves tattooed. Now having been down the botanical tattoo route before, and having had several botanical tattoo images sent to me that a respectable blog simply cannot repost, this request was approached with some trepidation. However in this case, having stumbled upont this image somewhere, they merely were amused by the notion. It figures, no real interest, no real dedication, pretty average, but they were searching for botanical images, so that may count for something. Sort of an interesting pair of tattoos though, chocolate and vanilla.

Book Report - Citrus

When you teach a subject like economic botany your bookshelf fills up with a remarkable variety of books, and having delved through so many, those that prove to be useful, informative, and a good read bob to the evaluative surface like cork, which is bark tissue of the cork oak (such asides are a recurring problem with accessing the economic botany data bases), and so these few get recommended to others who might share such an interest. Citrus, A History by Pierre Laszlo is a new book published in 2007, and this tells you more about my life than the book, as just now it gets its turn to be read, but what a shame it was to have waited so long because this is a very entertaining and well written book certain to teach you a great deal about these well known, and some not so well known (Shaddocks any one?), iconic fruits. You will learn everything from the occupational hazards bartenders face from making too many mojitos to the myriad references to citrus in poetry. And since my review comes so late, the price has dropped to your benefit, but even still perhaps a certain editor at the Chicago University Press will smile upon this unsolicited endorsement as my vast horde of readers clicks on the link above, a convenience for which the Phactor receives no compensation whatsoever, and think kindly upon a fellow who is even more tardy as an author than a reviewer.