Blijken toch overwegend snacks te zijn, dus voor de maaltijden kunnen mensen kijken naar typisch hollandse ingredienten – streek/seizoensproducten
Archive for November 2010
Document of the “Mercats de Barcelona” (in Spanish), describing four different routes through the city, all with a different perspective, to enjoy the large variety of markets.
Though the document is in Spanish, you may still be able to distill the address details of the different markets and get a general idea of the story behind each of the routes
1. Route past the markets of the past – no longer existing yet still recognizable through architecture and other references.
2. Route past the iconic markets – all markets in Barcelona are important, yet some are more significant than others.
3. Route past the “nous mercats” – build during the 50′s of the 20th century
4. Route past the modernist markets – build around the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, in modernist style.
source: Mercats de Barcelona
Dear fellow Curious Food Lovers,
August is in the air. It’s the season of summer in Europe, the time of an abundance of fresh vegetables and fruit.
Talking of fruit. A little while ago I started writing this frequent inspiration update and I wanted to focus on the amazing ways some fruits display their pips, in order to seduce birds to help with their reproduction. Then something funny happened, because while writing about the reproduction techniques of fruits, I could not help myself but to start with the story of the flowers and the bees. Because that’s the story at least I grew up with when asking where babies came from, so to me this theory had the closest association to reproduction.
That was where the confusion started. I thought that the subject of reproduction was quite straightforward, comparable to the human/mammal situation: egg + seed + intercourse = offspring (when all goes well). So, pollen + pistil + bee = offspring. Right?
When I came to think of it, however, the process supported by the bees of making sure that a flower transforms into fruit, seemed like only the beginning. True reproduction appeared to start when the seeds formed within the fruits are spread in order to grow new plants.
So my question is, when you compare the reproductive situation of fruit to the human reproduction: is the human baby than analogous to a single piece of fruit or to a whole new plant?
Perhaps the answer can be found in one of the many amazing botanical gardens around the world. If you’d like to dig deeper into the subject of how our fruit – and other plants – grows , you may want to visit one of the these great botanical gardens. These definitely qualify as interesting culinary activities, thanks to their background information about the reproductive systems of all thinkable kinds of plants. And not just that, officially botanical gardens also qualify as museums, based upon their facilities of presenting collections (of plants in this case) “for the purpose of study, education and enjoyment” (source http://icom.museum/hist_def_eng.html).
So lets put the botanical gardens in the Curious Food Lovers fact finding spotlights,
10 X “Did you know that…”:
1. there are over 1800 botanical gardens in more than 150 countries.
2. around the world, botanic gardens attract about 150.000.000 visitors per year.
3. botanic gardens are called that way because they display the botanic names of the plants – the formal scientific name conform the ‘International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (ICBN).
4. ”scientific” gardens are dating back to antiquity and were found in ancient Egypt, Assyria, Mexico and China and were used in particular for the study of plants of economic, medicinal or sheer exotic value.
5. the origin of modern botanical gardens can be traced to European medieval medicinal gardens known as physic gardens, the first of these being founded during the Italian Renaissance in the 16th century.
6. through the 17th century idea of a botanical garden changed to include presentations of the beautiful, strange, new and sometimes economically important plants being brought back from travels to the European colonies and other distant lands.
7. during the late 18th century economic botany became a new scientific approach: the study of relationships between plants and people, exploring the ways humans use plants for food, shelter, medicines, textiles, and much more.
8. in many cases botanical gardens are run by universities or other scientific organisations, in order to documented collections of living plants for the purposes of scientific research, conservation, display and education.
9. considering the large numbers of visitors during recent times, many gardens are grabbing the opportunity at the start of the 21st century to inform the general public about numerous environmental issues, such as biodiversity, sustainability and plant conservation.
10. you could say that a botanical garden is the vegetation-variety of the zoo.
Now, do you feel like putting on your gastronomy glasses and have a look around at one of the many botanical gardens of the world, looking for parts of reproduction story behind your food? To help you get started, I made a shortlist of a few of the largest and oldest gardens in the world. Short overviews with background information can be found at the detailed overview of each activity.
Royal Botanic Garden of Trinidad & Tobago
Fruit & Spice Park of Florida (United States)
Hortus Botanicus Leiden (the Netherlands)
Jardin des Plantes – Paris (France)
Komarov Botanical Institute – st Petersburg (Russian Federation)
Kew Gardens – London (United Kingdom)
National Botanic Garden of Belgium
Oxford Botanic Gardens (United Kingdom)
Qinling Mountains National Botanical Garden (China)
Royal Botanic Garden of Sydney (Australia)
Royal Botanic Garden of Ontario (Canada)
Royal Botanic Gardens of Melbourne (Australia)
The New York Botanical Garden (United States)
Of course, if you have any stories to share about your visits to one of the many botanical gardens or other the other great culinary activities of the world, I’d love know!
For now, happy exploring,
Marijke
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