We recently came across a token in memorium of the Father of Science in the Museo di Storia della Scienza in Florence. We hope it was not a result of a kitchen accident, but rather a final rebel yell against the authorities that tried to quash his free thinking and scientific pursuits.
We’ve seen a lot of fruits in our time, but a visit to the local crunchie food co-op this weekend yielded a queen we had never before seen. A monstera deliciosa, or “delicious monster”, beckoned from the exotic fruit table, daring us to shell out the $5.99 the store was asking for it. Never weak in the face of a challenge, we swallowed the price and took the very strange, phallic-shaped, green-scaled fruit home.
Turns out the 5.99 was nothing–for a fruit that takes a YEAR to mature. It’s the fruit of a philodendron, which has become a common decorative plant here in the States but is native to Mexico and Guatemala. The outer casing of the fruit is made of soft, green hexagonal scales that peel back, top to bottom when the fruit is stood on end, as it becomes ripe. Inside are fuzzy, white kernels that are soft and slippery when they’re extracted, and their flavor is the MOST DELICIOUS combination of pineapple and banana. Pure heaven.
But the monstera is not without its fangs. In fact, the whole fruit is completely poisonous until the moment the scales peel away by their own accord. The plant is full of oxalic acid (H2C2O4), a toxic member of the carboxylic acid family that converts insoluble iron compounds into soluble complex ions and is particularly useful as an acid wash in laundry detergents. How much of it is in the philodendron is unclear as yet, but it’s commonly known that rhubarb leaves are loaded with it, and that eating around 11 lbs of them will kill ya.
So…. a burning sensation was definitely felt in the mouth and lips after eating the monstera fruit, but one doesn’t recall whether it was before research into its chemical makeup had been done–or after.
Our friend Kai got her hands on The Hungry Scientist Handbook. This is what happened:
http://2.recordertheapp.com/1cb95b237ddf0288ed78
We don’t know what happened next. We hope nothing blew up.
We’re working on making her an edible hockey puck. Any suggestions for an insanely durable yet edible material?
We’ve learned that many locals in Tuscany buy their wine in bulk directly from the Chianti wineries and store it in refillable bottles. In order to keep the bottles air-tight, they pour a little oil at the top. Rather than using olive oil, which makes wine taste olivey, they use a petroleum jelly-based oil and a loose-fitting cap or cork.
So after you’ve bottled your own wine at home, or are filling up refillable bottles at a friend’s winery, try this simple method. Just remember to siphon off the oil before drinking the wine! (see the siphon below)
Here are some of our below-mentioned evilmad friends’ fabulous projects from the Hungry Scientist handbook:
As their greatest fans, we think IT IS IMPERATIVE that everyone spends some time on their fabulous website: evilmadscientist.com
WIRED is all we have to say.
Name the project: 
Regarding this last one, we couldn’t have said it better ourselves. In fact, we think they definitely said it better.
“The Hungry Scientist crew eat at a very long table laden with comestibles and, at times, combustibles. It’s so lengthy, in fact, that passing the salt and pepper got to be a bit of a chore. To expedite matters, they epoxied the shakers to a modified windup car. Now, instead of passing the salt, the salt passes you!”
We’d like to dedicate the first post of our first day in official publication to a very special couple of brains. Windell Oskay and Lenore Edman, aka www.evilmadscientist.com, are the truest hungry scientists. Their projects like “Demonstrate Magnetohydrodynamic Propulsion in a Minute” and “A Simple Persistence of Vision Approach to Lissajous Figures”, they have us humbled; but their “Play With Your Food” thread has our hearts. (Sierpinksi cookies? Edible plane fractals, people!). They are imaginative, disciplined, dedicated, lovely people, and they contributed a handful of amazing projects to The Hungry Scientist Handbook. For that, we will forever doff our caps. Please, everyone, send some love through the circuits toward our favorite evils.
Hungry Scientist arrived in Florence yesterday and has already come across some curious food stuffs.
Duff Love: That’s right, Homer Simpson’s favorite brew is here in Florence! Was it Springfield or Florence that had it first? Don’t know. Did the original Homer drink Duff while he wrote the Odyssey?
Power Fruit: Caught this by chance as I was walking by an arcade. Strange game involving monkeys. A brilliant Italian gamer has figured out that there’s more than one way to work a banana.
Frozen Heights: Florence has a gelatoria on almost every corner, and they all seem to be competing for the title of tallest scoops. When not serving customers, store owners can be found carefully building and mending their leaning towers of gelati. Cone-stacking has its own category of competition. Very serious stuff.
I am a big fan of Skor bars. I bought one at a gas station the other day and found that instead of that nice chocolate brown color it had turned completely white. I grabbed another bar from the same box, unwrapped it, and found the color you would expect—a nice chocolate brown. Considering that the two bars came from the same box, one would expect them to be the same age, and likely from the same batch. So my question is, what causes this effect? Maybe it was oxidation from a bad wrapper that let air sneak in?
This past weekend I helped good friend and Hungry Scientist Ryan Horan brew some beer. I was there more to help document the process than anything else as my knowledge of brewing is minimal. Ryan has been perfecting his process and is making his own Hog Splitter Imperial Stout this time around. Stay tuned for some more posts that describe the process.
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