Flowers Become Fruit

Photo by Liz Birnbaum, The Curated Feast for Ten Speed Press

Thought of the day: flowers become fruit.

The earliest cultivation of fruit in Mesopotamia included dates and olives (4000 BC), followed by pomegranate, grape, and fig. Based on literary sources, later fruits included the apple, pear, quince, and medlar (#Rosaceae family). This lineage of tending the trees — keenly observing their needs and their potential — is something precious. It also takes clarity and confidence to prune something dramatically to bring about fresh growth.

All of the food we eat today is the result of selections like these — the sweetest dates, the hardiest wheat, the juiciest peaches all come from a lineage of hidden hands. I’ve been thinking about that time scale recently — the advent of cities, agriculture, and the stories lost to time, imperialism, and cultural erasure.

Every bite has a story. What do you want to know about yours?