Tomato: Nature's Kidney

Tomatoes have many commendable traits: a pleasing red color, the flexibility of preparation (it's a sauce! it's a salsa! it's a salad! etc.), that darn Lycopene you keep hearing about, their aptness as projectile... the list goes on. Instead of telling you things you already know, we here at Edible Wrecks wish to broaden your horizons. Our goal is to show you the world of food from a new perspective. To inform you of the extraordinary, near-limitless potential of our most common crops and pre-packaged snacks. The tomato, you see, has a secret. Once the scientific world gets wind of this, we might have a firestorm of R&D on our hands, trying to harness this remarkable, and, until now, unheralded ability. Let's just hope it is used for the power of Good. Lord knows there are hundreds of grown-up pranksters--the little brother who stuck your finger in warm water overnight, the sword-fighting cousins, the Aunt with the lackadaisical bladder--who would use such knowledge for their nefarious schemes. So please, guard this information. Share it wisely. And know that tomatoes are not just a nutritious fruit (vegetable?) rich in antioxidants. They are, it seems, something else entirely......




Like kidneys, a tomato will, over time, collect and distribute a large quantity of urine.


"How do they do this?" you ask. "What sort of remarkable auto-urethra makes this possible in an organism with no known digestive system?" So far, it's a mystery. But the fact remains: A slice of tomato, given time to sit out on a kitchen table, will, as if by some reverse photosynthesis, produce and collect a sizable volume of what looks exactly like piss.

I give credit to my roommate for the discovery, and I thank him for allowing the speciman to remain, untouched, until the phenomenon was properly documented.

Look into the future! And imagine the possibilities...

To Steve Almond: A Rebuttal

About five or so years ago, Mr. Almond wrote a book called Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America. It was well-received, and the man became known as chief arbiter of taste for all things nougat-filled, caramel-injected, or sugar-coated. And with good reason: He begins the tome with the admission, both enviable and worrisome, that "[t]he author has eaten a piece of candy every single day of his entire life." Almond knows his material. And the story itself, part-memoir, part-literary journalism, is great fun: If you've ever desired intimate knowledge of someone else's oral cavity (and who hasn't?), you will find it here.

The narrative hinges on the author's investigation into the increasing amount of small candy factories being shut down by that other Big Three--Nestles, Hersheys, and Mars. The book is a tribute to these providers not only of flavor but of regional identity. Without their Twin Bing, older Idahoans will have lost a pathway to their youth, with nothing but the same five chocolate bars, from Seattle to South Beach, as available succor. Without the GooGoo Cluster, southerners would have to bond over something messier, like barbeque or a shared embarrassment over their glacial-thaw realization that slavery was a bad idea. Candy, Almond points out, is not merely for hyperactive children. It delivers solace. It brings companies billions. Whether personal or multi-corporational, it is a force, and as such deserves to be talked about.

There is one section that I do take umbrage with, and it is the subject of my titular rebuttal. (Which is also a good name for a Pam Anderson biopic.) On page 25 of the paperback copy, for three and a half pages, Almond lists and denounces those candies he does not see fit to eat; moreover, he eviscerates them, writing, "when I disapprove of a candy, the sentiment often veers into wrath." He titles this section Mistakes Were Made. Yes, Mr. Almond. Yes they were.

*Twizzlers
He begins with an inquiry into the red licorice straws' popularity, describing its texture as "fall[ing] somewhere between chitin and rain poncho." Chitin, by the way, is the hard, glossy material that makes up the exoskeleton of certain insects. I admire the description: tangible, surprising. And honestly, I can see what he means. Just because it may feel like I'm gnawing on an ant's molted torso doesn't mean that Twizzlers aren't completely satisfying. Embrace that plasticity; Derive pleasure from the slow release of artificial strawberry flavor from the chewed upon rippled stalks. I believe Almond's error was one of mastication strategy. In order to unleash the Twizzler's full potential, you must keep the single straw whole for as long as possible. Place one bite's worth of Twizzler in your mouth, but do not sever! Nibble the edges. Employ some light suction. As the bite lingers, it will dissolve, ever so slowly, transmogrifying from that tough, bendy rope into something else altogether, with a nuanced, developing flavor and, dare I say, subtle hints of ambrosia.

*White Chocolate
Almond describes a cross-country flight where, after scarfing down a white-chocolate lollipop, he threw up profusely. Vomiting, he writes, struck him as a proper response to this product which, truthfully, is not even chocolate, having not an ounce of cocoa. He makes a valid point. White Chocolate should not, in fact, be called 'White Chocolate.' It should be named something more representative. May I suggest a few ideas: Tongue Beauty Cream; Heavensent Yummy Yum; Milky Superness; Deliciousosity; The Edible Incarnation of Kathy Ireland, circa 1994.

*Marshmallow Peeps
(Otherwise known as, the greatest recombinant of sugar and sugar since that one fateful night with the Sugar twins of Beverly Heights.)
Our author dismisses Peeps for "encourag[ing] the notion that it is acceptable to eat child offspring." He notes the "piss yellow" color of the original. But look beyond the weird carnivoristic subtext. Grab a box of the brand new Green Peeps if you must. They come in rows of five, each baby chick attached at the malformed hip. Take the end one. Bite off the side-wing first. Relish the extra sugar, as the middle three will not be privy to such things. Then take out the head; no need for those beady food coloring eyes to stare longer than necessary. Consider this an act of mercy. Finish off the torso in two small bites or one, depending. It is the marshmallow you can eat whole while remaining socially accepted. Since bags of Jet-Puffed mallows became ubiquitous, you've yearned to eat them unadorned with melty chocolate or crumbled graham. The Peep is your permission slip, your gateway to anaphalactic bliss.
Whole or in bites; Fresh or stale: Truly, a Peep's house has many mansions. When microwaved, they bloom up to four times their size. Its granulated membrane barely contains the ooey goodness within, now warm and deflating, the very act itself mirroring our own growth and subsequent decay. Leave them out and their skin hardens. These are no Twinkee anomalies, immortal and ever-lasting. Peeps do expire with time. But be patient, for next spring those pliant chicks will rise again, fresh and puffy and new, waiting to abscond with our past candy-eating sins.

I hope I've made clear my position on Mr. Almond's rash judgments. He also disavows coconut and Lime LifeSavers, among others, but those will have to wait. I just opened a package from home filled with Reeses Peanut Butter Cups, Vanilla Cream Chocolate Eggs, and, of course, Marshmallow Peeps. We're about to get down with some serious self-consecration...

Chyawanprash

Chyawanprash is a type of Indian supplement made from fruit and herbs. The concoction most closely resembles a very thick jam, if that jam was made not from strawberries or apricots but instead the thick clots of muck and twigs found in your gutters every spring.

I found the bottle in a nearby Indian market. Their shelves overflow with delicious-looking sauces and huge burlap sacks of Jasmine rice. For some reason I was drawn to this strange, humble container.

Okay: maybe not humble. View the full-size image and you'll read its intoxicatingly persuasive slogan, "Strength from Within." How could one not buy this for $3.49, especially when one needs quarters for the laundromat? One needn't worry. In fact, one was told by the waif-ish Indian girl who works there that its consistency was like Nutella. One should have paid more attention to her immediate addendum.

"But no," she said, waving her hands, as if waiting for me to throw the rope in the water, "it does not taste anything like that!"

I plunked it down on the counter, next to my frozen onion-flavored parathas. When I got home I read the instructions, not realizing I was reading instructions for what I thought was a spicy jam that boosted my immune system.

'Take with hot water, milk, or juice. May also be taken as Bread spread or Jam.'

Take? Why 'take'? As I soon learned, you do not merely take something made with 43 natural ingredients using a 2000 year-old recipe. It takes you.

That next morning, I spread half of my toast (I was being cautious) with a thin layer of Chyawanprash. Known for its antioxidant properties, this alternative to my morning spread of raspberry would surely make me leaner, healthier, happier, an altogether stronger person. From within. Other studies show I'm not alone in wanting to improve through a daily regimen of the stuff. I would learn later, after the toast, far too late to derail the effects, that Chyawanprash has been proven to prevent steroid-induced cataract in the developing chick embryo. None of this can be good.

While I still can.... before it's too late.... you must know the cause of this, whatever is happening to me..... here are the ingredients, the nutrient-rich list of herbs and fruit that is causing me to grow strong, oh so strong, until I can no longer bear my own strength and break from my skin like a tumescent cob of corn from its own inferior husk.... please help......

1. Fresh Indian gooseberry fruit, 2. Sugar, 3. Honey, 4. Clarified butter, 5. Long pepper, 6. Sesame oil, 7. Giant potato, 8. Cardamom, 9. Bamboo manna, 10. Indian kudzu, 11. Winter cherry, 12. Asparagus, 13. Cinnamon Bark, Dashmool (14. Bengal quince, 15. Migraine bark, 16. Indian trumpet flower, 17. Indian Purple Trumpet, 18. Sal leaf, 19. Urara pitch, 20. Indian nightshade, 21. Small nightshade, 22. Small caltrops, 23. Cashmere bark), 24. Country mallow, 25. Wild green gram, 26. Wild black gram, 27. Galls, 28. Feather-foll plant, 29. Raisins, 30. Ceylon-cow plant, 31. Irish root, 32. Chebulic myrobalan, 33. Round zedoary, 34. Nut grass, 35. Spreading Hogweed, 36. Blue water lily, 37. Malabar nut, 38. Liquorice [sic], 39. Ice plant, 40. Sandalwood, 41. Clove, 42. Chinese cinnamon, 43. Indian Rose Chestnut

And so I bit into that side of toast, the one with the gleaming black layer underneath the earthy nut-brown of Teddy's SuperChunk. The familiar buttery, peanutty taste soon fell away, as did I, into a swirling mass of pepper and anchovy and ketchup and sand and baby vomit and Coca-Cola and rhubarb and burnt hair and passing diesel trucks and baker's chocolate and carrots cooked far too long and dentist's fluoride and blood and the taste in your mouth when you realize you'll never be 12-years-old again...

Goodbye.