Did anyone else hear the recent interview with Dan Koeppel on NPR? He's the author of "Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World." The story caught my attention when I first tuned in because the author was describing how the type of banana that we all currently know and love, the Cavendish, is being attacked by a blight that is responsible for wiping out its predecessor, the Gros Michel banana. Surprisingly, we may see the ubiquitous Chiquita banana disappear from our grocery stores within the next five years. But that's really just a small part of a fascinating story about the history the fruit and how it became such an everyday part of the American life.
Here is a link to NPR if you want to have a listen to the interview.
Also, I enjoyed Leslie Berliant's blog entry, "Yes, We Have No Bananas" on Celsias.com website. While you're there have a look at some of the ongoing projects on Celsias.
Meanwhile, I'm looking for a dwarf banana tree that will grow in the mid-south...
Monday, March 24, 2008
Farewell Sweet Cavendish
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1 comment:
I'm so sad. I love bananas. A man that we met in the Ukraine told us about how he had never seen a banana before, so when he escaped the Russian Army by running away to Berlin, he saw this amazing fruit on his new German employer's table. He thought that it must be the most expensive fruit in the whole world. Eventually the guy he was working for told him that they were bananas and that they were actually the cheapest fruit. So the first thing the man did after receiving his paycheck that week was to spend the whole thing on...bananas!
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