History of avocado filled with lust, luck
October 27, 2006
On a visit to Jamaica in 1672, Dr. W. Hughes, physician to King Charles II, discovered the delights of the avocado. However, his glowing account of the fruit’s virtues: “one of the most rare and pleasant fruits of the island,” cut no ice with the folks back home. His claim that “it nourisheth and strengtheneth the body” fell on deaf ears. What resonated with the public was Hughes’s titillating assertion, based, one must assume, on personal experience, that the avocado succeeded in “procuring lust exceedingly.”
That did it. Who’d be caught dead in the company of a lust-provoking avocado? It took years for this succulent fruit to scramble back from ignominy.
I’d have been quite prepared to risk a scandalous glance. I love avocados. But it occurred to me as I sliced into one recently that all I knew about avocados was that some were called “Hass” and some weren’t. I was curious to know more — especially the juicy stuff — so I decided to explore.
Almost immediately I stumbled upon this revealing bit of trivia: avocados got their name from the Spanish explorers. They called it the aguacate because they couldn’t pronounce the Aztec word — ahuacatl — which means “testicle.” The Aztecs, extrapolating blithely from appearances, attributed Viagra-man vigour to this handsomely shaped fruit.
I also found out that here in North America, if you’re not eating a “Hass” you’re probably eating a “Fuerte.” The Hass is the variety with the rough, almost black skin. It has a smaller pit and a more buttery texture than the green, smooth-skinned Fuerte.
Discount Pharmacy - Buy Pharmacy at discount prices including free shipping.Discount Pharmacy provides confortable and easy way to order discount pharmacy online.
In 1911 a chap named Carl Schmidt travelled to Mexico and brought a variety of avocado trees back to California. Two years later a bitter freeze gripped the area and only one tree survived. It was given the Spanish name, Fuerte, which means “vigorous” and it spawned an industry that thrives today.
But the most popular California avocado is the Hass, and I enjoyed the story of how it came to be — one of those proverbial “happy accident” tales. A.R. Ridout of Whittier, Calif., was well known as a scavenger — an avocado-obsessed scavenger — who snaffled up any seeds wherever he could, including restaurant garbage and that of his neighbours. He planted them along streets, in neighbours’ yards, in any plot of soil he could commandeer. Some time in the late 1920s he met Rudolph Hass, who had recently spent every penny he had to purchase a sparse grove of Fuerte trees in La Habra Heights in California.
Hass was poor, earning just 25 cents an hour as a postman, and he knew nothing about growing avocados. He had simply read about it in a magazine article that was accompanied by an illustration of an avocado tree abloom in dollar bills — a concept with irresistible appeal — and he turned to Ridout to help him get started.
Ridout sold him seeds and advised him how to plant them, but there’s no way of knowing what kind of seeds they were. Hass hired a professional, a Mr. Caulkins, to graft cuttings from the Fuerte trees onto the young trees from Ridout’s seeds. It was a frustrating, hit-and-miss endeavour and as years passed and grafts failed, Hass was close to despair. He was about to take an axe to one particularly obdurate tree when Caulkins persuaded him to let it grow and see what happened. What happened was the finest, most delicious avocado our entrepreneur postman had ever encountered. Rudolph Hass patented his “happy accident” in 1935. People — rich people — gobbled it up, and the money started rolling in.
Posted by toshko under Viagra News | Comments (0)