Algonquin Books

The Drunken Botanist

The Drunken Botanist: The Plants that Create the World's Great Drinks opens with a tale of author Amy Stewart on a quest for ingredients to make a gin cocktail. She does this not so much because she's thirsty, but to disprove the negative perceptions a fellow garden writer had about the spirit.

A few drinks mixed with fresh jalapeño, cilantro and cherry tomatoes later, she had a gin convert and a book idea. This scene sets the tone for the rest of the edible horticulture handbook. Instead of lecturing, Stewart presents herself as a savvy drinking buddy.

The book is smaller than a textbook in size and weight -- small enough, really, to carry with you into bars and pubs if needed. Organized into three parts that trace a cocktail in several makes, The Drunken Botanist begins with common plants found in familiar wines, beers and spirits.

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Tien Nguyen

Bluth's Culver City stand

If you've been eagerly awaiting the new season of Arrested Development, no doubt you've already made plans today to go to downtown Culver City sometime between noon and 7 p.m. today to check out the frozen banana stand.

For the uninitiated, that would be Bluth's Original Frozen Banana Stand, or one of Arrested Development's greatest props: In the show, the stand is a side business run by the Bluth family that's more or less considered the family's safety net (hence, "There's always money in the banana stand"). A lot happens to the banana stand during the course of the series -- it's torn down, rebuilt, set on fire, rebuilt and so on. And it has ties to a Korean immigrant. Right.

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Flickr/USDAgov

Tomato-basil soup

With tomato season just around the corner, a new study gives you permission to pig out on the ruby-colored fruit. Scientists have discovered that eating foods that contain traces of nicotine, such as tomatoes and peppers, helps lower the risk of developing Parkinson's disease, Science World News reports. (Previous studies have shown that smoking cigarettes and using tobacco in other forms lowers the risk of Parkinson's disease, but failed to discern whether it was nicotine or other components in tobacco that offer a protective effect.)

The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Washington, was published in the Annals of Neurology.

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Christine Chiao

Moon Juice

There's a growing number of juice joints in Los Angeles, emphasizing the benefits of drinking to your health -- quite literally. Fresh juices have become so de rigueur these days that it's not uncommon to hear 'juice' used as a casual verb among Angelenos. And whereas we're not likely to ask anyone if they've juiced for our own reasons, we have tried a number of spots around town, curious about the claims of better health.

A juice habit is an expensive one to maintain -- with the majority of the spots charging an average of $6 to $7 per drink. At most of the shops, another underlying similarity is overt mention of the health benefits, from notes on the menu to signages-as-decor. Some health experts view the popularity of juice cleanse programs as a long-lasting solution with wariness. The advice remains to eat rather than drink your fruits and vegetables. Still given the schedule some might have, one benefit juices are a convenient way to pack in a high level of fruit and vegetable consumption -- that experts won't argue against.

We selected four of our favorites for the occasional, quick nutritional supplement and organized them according to alphabetical order.

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Flickr/Eurofruit, Asiafruit & Americafruit

POM pomegranate juices

POM Wonderful pomegranate juice is made from the Wonderful variety of the fruit, but that doesn't make it some wonder drug.

The Food and Drug Administration and Federal Trade Commission have had enough of the company making medical claims such as that its products help reduce cholesterol, aid with erectile dysfunction, treat prostate cancer and limit the severity of colds. (In addition to POM Wonderful juice, the company sells POMx pills and liquid extract.)

On Jan. 16, the FTC upheld a judge's earlier decision against POM Wonderful, finding that the juice maker's advertisements mislead consumers about its products' health benefits, BloombergBusinessweek reports.

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Felicia Friesema

Albion strawberries at the Pasadena market

Eating three or more servings of red and blue berries a week may help reduce a woman's risk of heart attack, a new study suggests.

The study included nearly 94,000 young and middle-aged women who took part in the Nurses' Health Study II, according to U.S. News & World Report. The women completed questionnaires about their diet every four years for 18 years.

During the study period, 405 participants had heart attacks. Women who ate the most blueberries and strawberries were 32% less likely to have a heart attack, compared to women who ate berries once a month or less. This held true even among women who ate a diet rich in other fruits and vegetables. The findings appeared online January 14 in the journal Circulation.

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Christine Chiao

Members of the Fallen Fruit collective, county government, and Del Aire neighborhood took turns settling in a Long Beach Peach sapling into Del Aire Park soil on Saturday, Jan. 5, painting one more stroke to the edible art installation known as Fallen Fruit of Del Aire. The young tree joined 27 other fruit trees and eight grapevines planted throughout the park. It rounded out the official unveiling of the civic arts project, which doubles as the first public fruit park in not only Los Angeles but the state of California.

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Flickr/yto

Pineapple

To simplify your piña colada making, Australian fruit Frankensteins have created a pineapple that tastes like coconut.

The Department of Agriculture's research station in Queensland has been working on the new breed of pineapple for more than a decade, ABC News reports.

Senior horticulturalist Garth Senewski says the AusFestival pineapple is now in the final stages of production.

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Flickr/Ben Sutherland

Broccoli, or Tiny Tasty Tree Tops

Kids, kids, kids. If Tom Sawyer told you it was fun to paint a fence, would you do it for him while he kicked back? Clearly, you would.

A new study suggests that spicing up the names of vegetables, such as calling broccoli "Power Punch Broccoli," will get kids to eat them more, ABC News reports.

The study, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, exposed more than 1,000 kids in seven New York elementary schools to lunchtime vegetable choices with and without innovative names like "Silly Dilly Green Beans," "Tiny Tasty Tree Tops" and "X-ray Vision Carrots."

Kids exposed to the "re-branded" veggies ate twice as many compared to vegetables listed only as "Food of the Day." Marketing manipulation starts young!

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stevendepolo/flickr

Fruit cups

Yesterday, fruit conglomerate Dole Food sent two of its major assets winging across the Pacific. As reported in Reuters, Dole has sold its packaged foods and Asian fresh produce businesses to Japanese company Itochu Corp. for the handsome price of $1.7 billion. The deal gives Itochu exclusive rights to the Dole trademark on all packaged food sold around the world and produce distributed in Australia and New Zealand as well as Asia.

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