“The name given to the Capsicum fruits varies between English-speaking countries.

In Australia, New Zealand and India, heatless species are called “capsicums” while hot ones are called “chilli”/”chillies” (double L). Pepperoncini are also known as “sweet capsicum”. The term “bell peppers” is almost never used, although C. annuum and other varieties which have a bell-shape and are fairly hot, are often called “bell chillies”.

In the United Kingdom and Ireland, the heatless varieties are commonly known simply as “peppers” (or more specifically “green peppers”, “red peppers”, etc.) while the hot ones are “chilli”/”chillies” (double L) or “chilli peppers”.

In the United States and Canada, the common heatless species is referred to as “bell peppers”, “sweet peppers”, “red/green/etc. peppers”, or simply “peppers”, while the hot species are collectively called “chile”/”chiles”, “chili”/”chilies”, or “chili”/”chile peppers” (one L only), “hot peppers”, or named as a specific variety (e.g., banana pepper).

In Polish and in Hungarian, the term “papryka” and “paprika” (respectively) is used for all kinds of capsicum peppers (the sweet vegetable, and the hot spicy) as well as for dried and ground spice made from them (named paprika in both U.S. English and Commonwealth English). Also fruit and spice can be attributed as “papryka ostra” (hot pepper) or “papryka słodka” (sweet pepper). The term “pieprz” (pepper) instead means only grained or ground black pepper (incl. its green, white, and red forms) but not capsicum. Sometimes the hot capsicum spice is also called “chilli”.

In Italy and the Italian- and German-speaking parts of Switzerland, the sweet varieties are called “peperone” and the hot varieties “peperoncino” (literally “small pepper”). In French, capsicum is called “poivron”. In German, capsicum is called “paprika”; in Dutch, this word is used for bell peppers, whereas “chilli” is reserved for powders and hot pepper variants are referred to as “Spaanse pepers” (Spanish peppers). In Switzerland however, the condiment powder made from capsicum is called “paprika” (German language regions) and “paprica” (French and Italian language region).

In Spanish-speaking countries there are many different names for each variety and preparation. In Mexico the term chile is used for “hot peppers” while the heatless varieties are called pimiento (the masculine form of the word for pepper, which is pimienta). Several other countries, such as Chile, whose name is unrelated, Perú, Puerto Rico, and Argentina, use ají. In Spain, heatless varieties are called pimiento and hot varieties guindilla. Also, in Argentina and Spain, the variety C. chacoense is commonly known as “putaparió”, a slang expression equivalent to “damn it”, probably due to its extra-hot flavour. In Indian English, the word “capsicum” is used exclusively for Capsicum annuum. All other varieties of hot capsicum are called chilli. In northern India and Pakistan, Capsicum annuum is also commonly called “Shimla Mirch” in the native languages. Shimla incidentally is a popular hill-station in India (and “Mirch” means chilli in local languages).

In Japanese, tōgarashi (唐辛子, トウガラシ “Chinese mustard”) refers to hot chili peppers, and particularly a spicy powder made from them which is used as a condiment, while bell peppers are called pīman (ピーマン, from the French piment or the Spanish pimiento).”

Wikipedia

Figs by D.H. Lawrence

The proper way to eat a fig, in society,
Is to split it in four, holding it by the stump,
And open it, so that it is a glittering, rosy, moist, honied, heavy-petalled four-petalled flower.

Then you throw away the skin
Which is just like a four-sepalled calyx,
After you have taken off the blossom, with your lips.

But the vulgar way
Is just to put your mouth to the crack, and take out the flesh in one bite.

Every fruit has its secret.

The fig is a very secretive fruit.
As you see it standing growing, you feel at once it is symbolic :
And it seems male.
But when you come to know it better, you agree with the Romans, it is female.

The Italians vulgarly say, it stands for the female part ; the fig-fruit :
The fissure, the yoni,
The wonderful moist conductivity towards the centre.

Involved,
Inturned,
The flowering all inward and womb-fibrilled ;
And but one orifice.

The fig, the horse-shoe, the squash-blossom.
Symbols.

There was a flower that flowered inward, womb-ward ;
Now there is a fruit like a ripe womb.

It was always a secret.
That’s how it should be, the female should always be secret.

There never was any standing aloft and unfolded on a bough
Like other flowers, in a revelation of petals ;
Silver-pink peach, venetian green glass of medlars and sorb-apples,
Shallow wine-cups on short, bulging stems
Openly pledging heaven :
Here’s to the thorn in flower ! Here is to Utterance !
The brave, adventurous rosaceæ.

Folded upon itself, and secret unutterable,
And milky-sapped, sap that curdles milk and makes ricotta,
Sap that smells strange on your fingers, that even goats won’t taste it ;
Folded upon itself, enclosed like any Mohammedan woman,
Its nakedness all within-walls, its flowering forever unseen,
One small way of access only, and this close-curtained from the light ;
Fig, fruit of the female mystery, covert and inward,
Mediterranean fruit, with your covert nakedness,
Where everything happens invisible, flowering and fertilization, and fruiting
In the inwardness of your you, that eye will never see
Till it’s finished, and you’re over-ripe, and you burst to give up your ghost.

Till the drop of ripeness exudes,
And the year is over.

And then the fig has kept her secret long enough.
So it explodes, and you see through the fissure the scarlet.
And the fig is finished, the year is over.

That’s how the fig dies, showing her crimson through the purple slit
Like a wound, the exposure of her secret, on the open day.
Like a prostitute, the bursten fig, making a show of her secret.

That’s how women die too.

The year is fallen over-ripe,
The year of our women.
The year of our women is fallen over-ripe.
The secret is laid bare.
And rottenness soon sets in.
The year of our women is fallen over-ripe.

When Eve once knew in her mind that she was naked
She quickly sewed fig-leaves, and sewed the same for the man.
She’d been naked all her days before,
But till then, till that apple of knowledge, she hadn’t had the fact on her mind.

She got the fact on her mind, and quickly sewed fig-leaves.
And women have been sewing ever since.
But now they stitch to adorn the bursten fig, not to cover it.
They have their nakedness more than ever on their mind,
And they won’t let us forget it.

Now, the secret
Becomes an affirmation through moist, scarlet lips
That laugh at the Lord’s indignation.

What then, good Lord ! cry the women.
We have kept our secret long enough.
We are a ripe fig.
Let us burst into affirmation.

They forget, ripe figs won’t keep.
Ripe figs won’t keep.

Honey-white figs of the north, black figs with scarlet inside, of the south.
Ripe figs won’t keep, won’t keep in any clime.
What then, when women the world over have all bursten into affirmation ?
And bursten figs won’t keep ?

“Lack of vitamin A can cause poor vision, including night vision, and vision can be restored by adding it back into the diet. An urban legend says eating large amounts of carrots will allow one to see in the dark. The legend developed from stories of British gunners in World War II, who were able to shoot down German planes in the darkness of night. The legend arose during the Battle of Britain when the RAF circulated a story about their pilots’ carrot consumption as an attempt to cover up the discovery and effective use of radar technologies in engaging enemy planes, as well as the use of red light (which does not destroy night vision) in aircraft instruments. It reinforced existing German folklore and helped to encourage Britons—looking to improve their night vision during the blackouts—to grow and eat the vegetable.”

Wikipedia

“What’s up, Doc?”

Bugs Bunny

I Was ‘Olding Me Coconut, Harry Champion, 1911

“I do not like broccoli. And I haven’t liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I’m President of the United States and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli.”

George H. W. Bush

“The point is that I’ve tried to bring out the idea that these people eating potatoes by the light of their lamp have dug the earth with the self-same hands they are now putting into the dish, and it thus suggests manual labour and – a meal honestly earned.”

Vincent Van Gogh on The Potato Eaters

“Amflora is a starch potato developed by BASF for the production of specialty starch. Potato starch consists of two types of starch with very different properties: amylose and amylopectin. Instead of the regular 20/80 amylose-/amylopectin mixture in a typical potato, Amflora has been genetically modified to contain only amylopectin. This gives the starch superior properties for a variety of technical applications such as making glossy paper, binding concrete.”

The PotatoPro Newsletter

“Oranges and lemons,
Say the bells of St. Clement’s.

You owe me five farthings,
Say the bells of St. Martin’s.

When will you pay me?
Say the bells of Old Bailey.

When I grow rich,
Say the bells of Shoreditch.

When will that be?
Say the bells of Stepney.

I do not know,
Says the great bell of Bow.

Here comes a candle to light you to bed,
And here comes a chopper to chop off your head!

Chop chop chop chop
The last man’s dead!”

English Nursery Rhyme

“O! the women say,
He is as sweet as the mellowest pear,
But handsomeness will pass away.”

Theocritus, Idyll VII

“Your old virginity is like one of our French withered pears: it looks ill, it eats dryly.”

William Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well

“The avocado (Persea americana) is a tree native to Central Mexico, classified in the flowering plant family Lauraceae along with cinnamon, camphor and bay laurel. Avocado or alligator pear also refers to the fruit (botanically a large berry that contains a single seed) of the tree, which may be pear-shaped, egg-shaped or spherical.

The word “avocado” comes from the Spanish aguacate which in turn comes from the Nahuatl word ahuácatl (testicle, a reference to the shape of the fruit). Avocados were known by the Aztecs as ‘the fertility fruit’.”

Wikipedia

“Garlic has been highly regarded since antiquity for both its flavor and its therapeutic qualities. In the Middle Ages it was used as a talisman to keep the Evil One at bay.”

Silvia Malaguzzi, Food and Feasting In Art