Saturday February 05, 2005 Omni - where are they now? (April 1990)
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Yet two more Continuum articles. |
- How to Eat Like an Inca:
Speckled beans that puff up in hot oil like popcorn, two-foot-long pods that produce a frothy sweet-as-ice-cream pulp and tubers that taste much the same as potatoes flavoured with sour cream.
These delicacies are among at least 30 "lost" crops once cultivated by South America's Inca civilisation. With the exception of the potato, these Inca foodstuffs were ignored by the Spanish invaders.
The article goes on to mention that these items could be grown in cooler zones like North America, Europe and Australia and hopes that farmers there might be interested in cultivating them.
Did that happen? I don't know, but I did find a company that's supplying some of these exotic crops and where you can get them if you live in the United States.
I also found The Exotic Kitchens of Peru, a book of recipes, to help you cook these dishes yourself (which has mixed reviews on Amazon).
And finally, and slightly off-subject but still interesting, I also found a great site if you want to get back to your primative roots. It's A Taste of History Through the Ages.
- Robug - The Incredible Mechanical Beetle: this piece describes
how British designer Arthur Collie has been studying the movements of
stag beetles.
From this he's come up with the design of an insect-like
robot which is able to cling to and climb up plywood and even glass
surfaces.
The article then describes several scenerios where this type of robot could be used, including inspecting a ships hull under water or cleaning up a nuclear power plant.
This appears to be a robot which had a great future, as I was able to find web sites for later generations of the same beast (Robug III and Robug IV).
( Feb 05 2005, 05:59:18 AM PST ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [0]
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