10.16.2008

Food is weird

Right now, I'm drinking a brew made from the roasted, ground-up pits of a cherry that grows in subtropical climates. I do this almost every morning, and so do hundreds of millions of other people - enough to make it among the world's most popular beverages. You'd be hard-pressed to find a restaurant or bar in America that doesn't offer it.

Some people like to flavor their roasted-ground-up-subtropical-cherry-pit brew with a solution made from the dried seed pods of one of three species of a rare orchid. (These orchids don't self-pollinate, so in order to get the pod, you either have to trust the pollinating power of insects and wind, or go around harvesting the pollen and brushing it onto the flowers' pistils yourself.) This flavor is now so widely used that it is sometimes used as a synonym for "dull."

Isn't that crazy?

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