Orange Cauliflower

Saveur.com

I don't do the grocery shopping for my household, but the other day I found myself in the produce section of my neighborhood Ralphs. There, nestled next to the broccoflower (possibly my favorite vegetable) was ... an orange cauliflower. Naturally I wanted to bring some home and taste it but it was way more expensive than any head of cauliflower should be, so instead I came home and Googled it.
Turns out the orange variety (tons more beta-carotene than the white variety) was developed from a mutant plant found in a swamp north of Toronto. Food writers who have tasted it say it's a bit sweeter than white cauliflower. Well, now I'm even more intrigued. For more information on this colorful new vegetable, go here.  Also check out the Saveur.comhttp://www.saveur.com/article/Kitchen/The-Story-Behind-Orange-Cauliflower article, "The Story Behind Orange Cauliflower."

Suggested Reading for St. Patrick's Day

And it's a feminist fiction bonus...
Check out Erin Hart's series of books about pathologist Nora Gavin. If you laready know the series, you're in luck, the latest in the series, The Book of Killowen, was just published this month. Archaeologist Cormac Maguire is back too!  Author Hart is incredibly accessible. She's on FB (and not just a fan page) and you can find out more about her books at her site. Nora is an American but the books all take place in Ireland.
For another kind of Irish mystery, dip into Tana French's books featuring the Dublin Murder Squad. The paperback version of her latest, Broken Harbor, will be released next month. 

Read some Roman Noir for Ides of March

If you don't know Kelli Stanley's great roman noir novels (Nox Dormienda and The Curse Maker), today is a good time to change that.  Set in the first century AD, the books' protagonist is Arcturus, a physician. The books are lots of fun.

Google Celebrates International women's Day

The Red Market by Scott Carney, a review

Scott Carney is an investigative reporter who became interested in the "red market" economy while on assignment for Wired.com and Mother Jones Magazine. The topic kept expanding and before long, the author was deep into the research that would become this book, an examination of the trafficking--legal and not--in human tissue. As it turns out, all those urban legands about waking up in a hotel room soaking in a tub of ice and missing a kidney are not far from the truth, and Carney recounts tales of people kidnapped and kept captive in order to drain their blood and whole industries related to what is called "reproductive tourism." Along the way he gives his readers the history of blood donation in America and the UK and explains how laws designed to protect patient privacy actually help the criminals who are making billions off the illegal trade in human tissue of all kinds.

This is fascinating stuff, a peek into a world that operates on the edges of medical research and in the shadows of government institutions. A thriller writer could find a lifetime of inspiration here. Who knew that India was the source of most of the skeletons found in medical schools today, or that they were sourced from bone traders who got them from grave robbers? (Carney interviews one bone trader who freely admits he snatches burning bodies from funeral pyres as soon as the families have left.) India's ban on exporting human tissue has onlly driven the bone trade underground, and Carney recounts a visit to a rural police station where a cache of skulls has been confiscated and bags of leg bones are coveted by both the Buddhists in next-door Bhutan (as raw material for flutes) and hospitals who want to use them for grafts.

This is what a winner looks like

Photo by Steve Gtanitz

Robin Roberts, glowing on the red carpet at the Oscars!  Fabulous in blue...

Go Danica Go!

This one's for the history books babe! Read the story here. I want the action figure!