Category:
Vegetables

Veggie Cannibalism

We all know of the "animal cannibal" motif in ads. A chicken or cow or pig dressed as a chef invites the viewer to snack on his relatives. But I have never seen veggie cannibalism till this ad.

Can WU-vies find other examples?

Posted By: Paul - Wed Apr 15, 2020 - Comments (1)
Category: Animals, Business, Advertising, Cannibalism, Vegetables

Cucumber Sandwich Patent

Artist Alex Stenzel not only invented a cucumber sandwich, but in 2006 he managed to obtain a patent for it. It's a design patent, but a patent nonetheless.

His idea was to hollow out a cucumber and stuff it with ingredients. He then used one end of the cucumber to plug up the other stuffed side. He called this a 'gorilla sandwich'.



The site dailytitan.com offers some details about how Stenzel came up with his idea:

artist and philosopher, Alex Stenzel, 44, of Pacific Palisades, Calif., has developed a new kind of breadless sandwich that has taken the raw food community by storm. Stenzel's invention, known as the 'Gorilla Sandwich,' substitutes traditional sliced bread for a hollowed-out cucumber filled with kale, olives, mustard greens, walnuts and avocado - among other healthy ingredients.

The name 'Gorilla Sandwich,' according to Stenzel, was chosen after researching gorillas and discovering their diet consists of many greens that are high in protein.

"I'm very much into health," Stenzel said. "I've always been playing around with different types of herbs and different kinds of vegetables."

Stenzel, who is originally from an industrial area in Germany, came across this idea when confronted with a choice: eat his salad at home or store it inside a hollowed-out cucumber to make it portable enough to take to the beach with him. For Stenzel, who is a surfing enthusiast, the answer was obvious, and he was soon off to the beach to 'kiss the waves,' as he calls it, with his new edible invention. Stenzel also has had a world ranking for three different sports: tennis, mountain biking and the Iron Man World Championships in Hawaii in 1986.

"To reach the highest performance level possible, I experimented with different healthy diets," he said.

Stenzel has posted a series of videos on YouTube that provide complete instructions on how you can make your own gorilla sandwich.





Posted By: Alex - Wed Mar 25, 2020 - Comments (0)
Category: Food, Vegetables, Inventions, Patents

Does holy water help radishes grow better?

In 1979, researcher Sandra Lenington of the University of Santa Clara set out to answer this question. Her curiosity had been sparked by learning that Canon William V. Rauscher had reported that “canna plants given holy water left over from use in religious services grew more than three times higher than canna plants which were not given holy water.” She decided to try to duplicate his observations under more rigorous conditions.



She watered one group of radishes with regular water, and a second group with holy water. After three weeks, she concluded that there was “no significant difference in the growth rates of these radish plants given holy water versus radish plants given tap water.” She published her results in the journal Psychological Reports (1979, 45, 381-382).

However, she noted that Canon Rauscher believed in the power of holy water, whereas she didn’t, and this may have affected the outcome of her study: “There are numerous documented studies showing that positive or negative belief will either benefit or adversely affect plant growth.” She suggested that future studies might try to better control for this variable.

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click to enlarge

Posted By: Alex - Sat Feb 01, 2020 - Comments (3)
Category: Religion, Science, Vegetables, 1970s

Nutrimato

According to wikipedia:

a drink made primarily of reconstituted tomato juice concentrate and seasoned beef broth, with added vitamins and iron. Nutrimato was produced beginning in 1972 by the Duffy-Mott company in California and discontinued in 1975.

Nutrimato would have been a good name for a robot. Not so much for a juice drink.

Green Bay Press Gazette - Nov 8, 1972

Posted By: Alex - Mon Nov 05, 2018 - Comments (3)
Category: Soda, Pop, Soft Drinks and other Non-Alcoholic Beverages, Vegetables, 1970s

Richard Nixon Eggplants

In May 1973, New York magazine ran a photo of an eggplant that looked like Richard Nixon. In 2017, the magazine's blog remembered it as "Maybe the funniest page New York has ever published."

But it turns out that there were quite a few other Nixon-resembling eggplants reported in the news in '73 and '74. For a while it was quite the thing to do. I think there are just a lot of eggplants that look like Nixon.

New York Magazine - May 14, 1973



Philadelphia Inquirer - Sep 6, 1974



Gastonia Gazette - Aug 15, 1973



Hartford Courant - July 24, 1973



Denton Record Chronicle - Dec 10, 1973

Posted By: Alex - Wed Aug 29, 2018 - Comments (3)
Category: Politics, Vegetables, 1970s

Vegetable Orchestra

They've got a great beet!

Their website

Posted By: Alex - Mon Jul 16, 2018 - Comments (2)
Category: Food, Vegetables, Music

Corn with odd number of rows

Hood County News-Tablet - Mar 17, 1966



Ears of corn almost always have an even number of rows. Foodreference.com explains the science:

Row number is always an even number because corn spikelets are borne in pairs, and each spikelet produces two florets: one fertile and one sterile. Stress at a particular stage in development could theoretically produce an ear with an odd number of rows - but I believe if you looked under a microscope, you would find an unseen row that failed to develop fully.

When corn ears are found that have an odd number of rows, that's considered weird enough to make news. For instance, cases of odd-rowed corn surfaced in 1930 (found by Everett Kelderhouse of Collins, Iowa), 1941 (found by Ignac Sedlacek of Malmo, Nebraska), and 1949 (found by Alfred Kohnert of Calamus, Iowa).

Lincoln Evening Journal - Oct 24, 1941



Carrol Daily Times - Sep 14, 1949



In popular culture, finding odd-rowed corn was sometimes used to make impossible-to-come-true promises. For instance, slaves might be told that they could have their freedom if they could find an ear of corn with an odd number of rows. But in the example below, recounted in Atheism and Arithemetic, Or, Mathematical Law in Nature (1885), one slave supposedly devised a way to find some odd-rowed corn:

A story is told of a slave who, on being promised his freedom if he would find an ear of corn having an odd number of rows of kernels, went into the corn-field and carefully opening the husks on a number of ears, deftly cut out a row of kernels from each, closing up the husks over the ears again. The corn grew and ripened, closing up in its growth the vacant spaces, and when it was gathered he found an ear with an odd number of rows, and presented it and claimed the promised boon!

Posted By: Alex - Wed Jul 13, 2016 - Comments (0)
Category: Food, Vegetables

Vertical Farming; Its A Jersey Thing

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A facility being built in New Jersey is going to be the world's largest vertical farming plant. AeroFarms is set to be 3 times bigger than the next largest place of its kind located in Japan. Water usage is much lower while yield is substantially higher than standard farming operations. It looks like something that would be used to grow food in a Mars colony or in an underground bunker after Armageddon. But perhaps we will find that solving world hunger is a Jersey thing.

Posted By: Alex - Tue Jun 07, 2016 - Comments (4)
Category: Agriculture, Food, Vegetables, Horticulture and Gardens, Nature

The Popular Pickle



There is so much to love about this video, from the whimsical music which makes it seem as if the cucumbers are just going on holiday, instead of being wrenched from their happy fields and families, then sliced and seasoned for consumption by monstrous hairless apes, to the very phrase "pickle packer." The one omission, understandable in light of 1950s' reticence, is no mention of the cucumber as sex toy.

Posted By: Paul - Fri Apr 10, 2015 - Comments (4)
Category: Regionalism, Advertising, Industry, Factories and Manufacturing, Farming, Vegetables, Pickles, 1950s

Peas mean something

In 1904, this young lady was dismissed as "demented." Today she might be recognized as a great performance artist.

Quietly entering the offices of various city officials this morning, a young lady about twenty-five years of age, neatly and attractively gowned in green, opened a paper bag of dried peas, threw a handful on the floor and left after making the statement, "Peas mean something." Later she went to the court house and repeated the act in the offices of Clerk of Courts Fred Badger and Sheriff M.J. Rounds.


Oshkosh Daily Northwestern - Apr 12, 1904

Posted By: Alex - Sun Jan 25, 2015 - Comments (10)
Category: Food, Vegetables, 1900s

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Who We Are
Alex Boese
Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes.

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Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.

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