Propinquity

The second pot of chives (the one that I didn't knock over) started germinating today. By "started germinating" I mean that one lone green shoot has finally made its way up to the open air. Let's...I planted these at around the 14th, and so that's about a 13 day germination period.

Nothing's coming up with the dragon plants, but then, those are only from about a week ago.

Here're some photos of my germinating chives. The last picture was taken yesterday, right before the seeds in the second pot decided that they're fed up with their subterranean life-style:

Jan 15th


Jan 21st


And finally -- the 26th of January.

... ...

Davis is one of those places that is blessed with a farmer's market every Saturday and every Wednesday, and it's a small enough town so walking there every Saturday morning (weather permitting), is an option. I like getting my fruits there once the fruits have started coming out because, while the prices are sometimes more expensive than the prices you'd find in places such as Safeway, the fruits also tastes better.

The cultivars of fruits grown is only a small part of the reason why that is. If you took the type of tomato plant that produces the bland tomatoes you'd find in the supermarkets home and grew them at home, you'd find that the final result still tastes much better than the store variety.

It has something to do with the process of fruit ripening. We can tell most ripe fruits from unripe ones by some combination (or summation) of these three basic hints: 1) it's softer, 2) it's a different color, and 3) you don't feel like spitting it back out when you take a bite of it, i.e., ripe fruits taste better than unripe ones. The "become softer" thing is due to the start of the degradation of secondary cell walls (the stuff that makes wood hard? All plants have a little bit of it surrounding their cells to some degree). The change of color is due to the interconversion of plastids, such as chloroplast (green), to chromoplastic (red, orange, yellow, etc). The tasting better thing is due to the degradation of acids and chemical compounds (e.g. tannin and other phenolics) that gives the fruits a bitter or astringent taste). (The plants developed this because it doesn't want its seeds to be eaten before they're down developing and can protect themselves through the...um...less hospitable conditions of an animal's digestive tract.)

All this can be induced artificially by ethylene, a plant hormone.

So what generally happens is that the growers will pick the still green fruits (vine ripen = a slight hint of not-green color on the fruit) and pack them and ship them off. Green fruits are hard and don't get damaged as easily during shipping and then, once they've reached their destination, the fruits are "forced" to ripen by exposing them to ethylene (I wonder if they still do the chamber thing, anyone know?). The downside to this is that natural ripening also involves the production of sugar and transfer of ergastic (secondary metabolites, usually the stuff that makes the fruit smell good / have a particular taste, that sort of thing) substances to the fruit, and when the fruits are forced to ripen, they don't get that because there's no plant and leaves around to produce the sugar or transfer the stuff from. That's basically how you get a fruit that is technically ripe but without the benefits of high sugar content or most other things that make the fruit taste good.

The sad thing is, they've done surveys about this and the consumers will always pick the better looking fruit to the better tasting ones. The naturally ripen ones will never be as appealing shelf-wise because they bruise easily during shipping and well...next time you go pick out an orange or something, the one that you'd usually skip over, that has a slightly darker color and is kind of bruised looking? There's a high chance that that one'd taste sweeter than the really firm, perfect fruit sitting next to it. (Though they're trying to get rid of those fruits, too.)

Now, since I do sometimes play the part of the starving college student (which I am very much not) with great skill and conviction, I only do a very small fraction of my shopping at farmer's market. My decision to get what where usually came down to this: for everyday food and practices with recipes, get the cheap, supermarket stuff; for the fruits / veggies that I plan on eating raw and for cooking for special occasions, go to farmer's market.

Then of course my parents sometimes bring me a bunch of fruits which will be the forced ripened ones, and I'm not picky, I'll eat them anyways.