13 Sep 2006
Modified Foods to Die For

Pretty funny, but she gets persimmons all wrong. No need to genetically modify them: they taste great if picked and prepared correctly. I suspect that she's been eating Asian persimmons, the really large (fist sized) variety that you run across on the produce counter in upscale grocery stores. If that's the case, I'd agree with her, although I'd suggest the modification be simply to stop buying them!

American PersimmonTo the left is an American Persimmon - about two or three inches in diameter (max) and very common from Virginia through Tennessee, Kentucky and southern Indiana. And delicious. There are whole festivals in this area of the country devoted to the lowly persimmon.

American Persimmons are an astringent type, and cannot be eaten until becoming custard-soft by an after-ripening of exposure to light and frost for a few days. Hence the rule: you can't pick persimmons until after Jack Frost's first visit. And picking isn't really the right word - most of the fruit will have fallen to the ground by this time, and it's perfectly OK to harvest them. Before being used the persimmons are pulped - the skin and seeds are removed by straining through a sieve or colander. You end up with an orange goo the consistency of sour cream.

You can then use the pulp to create the most delicious pudding imaginable:

Auntie's Persimmon Pudding

2 cups persimmon pulp        2 cups sugar
2 eggs, well beaten          1 1/4 cups buttermilk
1 1/4 cups evaporated milk   1 tsp soda
1 3/4 cups flour             2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon               1 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup cooking oil            pinch of salt

preheat oven to 325 degrees
combine pulp, sugar and eggs in a large mixing bowl
stir soda into buttermilk and add to mixture
all all other ingredients, saving cooking oil for last
mix well
bake in a buttered 9x13 pan for 1 hour

If you can find real persimmons you owe it to yourself to try this during the coming holiday season. It's a tradition around here to make a batch for Thanksgiving and another for Yule. It just wouldn't be the holidays without persimmon pudding.

GMOs deserve a makeover -- If we're going to be tinkering with the very building blocks of life, I expect to be seriously entertained. Here are my suggestions for modified foods that would make it worth playing God. Commentary by Lore Sjöberg.

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17:54 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link