September 22, 2007

Fruit from three perspectives

Have you heard? Hundreds of millions of honey bees are dying around the country of a yet-undetermined cause. The widespread collapse of bee colonies is putting at jeopardy the pollination of $14 billion of fruits, vegetables and nuts annually. Theories range from pesticide overuse to global warming... alarming (though not that surprising, unfortunately) that human activities could be having this significant of an impact to such an essential component of the food chain.

La Verne and I took a quick day trip to check out the Snoqualmie Falls and spotted some honeybees hard at work. Blackberries abound in the wild up here in the Pacific Northwest, and while they are self-pollinating, these bees still do contribute significantly to production.

Later that afternoon, we checked out Thanh Son Tofu off of 12th Avenue adjacent to the I-District. We stopped by because a friend of ours told us that they had homemade tofu served with a sweet ginger syrup. We also tried the xôi gấc (sweet glutinous rice flavored with different varieties of fruit... the yellow portion was durian, which was particularly good) and the savory bánh bá trạng. Flavorful, insanely inexpensive, and ridiculously filling.

Our last stop of the day took us to crazyberry up in Capitol Hill. This shop just opened up a month ago and is a nice stop for frozen yogurt that actually tastes like real yogurt. We like getting the strawberry & green tea yogurt -- which go surprisingly well together -- topped with mango, strawberries and blueberries. It's all about the toppings...

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