My wife has been kidding me about my memory for as long as I can remember. This could go back more than 17 years, but I can’t be sure. The good news is that I have never had a photographic memory. Not even close. She, on the other hand, remembers things. She always has, always will.

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What exactly is the deal with green chili peppers? They totally confuse me. I like Mexican food very much, but I have a problem with those green chilies. One time I eat them and they are red hot. Another time they are not. I never like super-hot foods because to me the heat masks the flavor. So I have a need-to-know rule when I order food in general.

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My first memory of eating eggs as a child is not a happy one: I clearly remember gagging on them. To persuade me to eat soft-boiled eggs, my parents would add some pieces of toast and serve the mixture to me in a brightly-colored egg cup. I don’t know if they sell these cups today, but we still have one at home, though we never use it. I forced myself to eat some of this concoction, but it was never a favorite of mine.

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Some years ago, goaded on by some of my high school buddies, I wrote a letter to the editor at the National Enquirer in response to a story about a clothing store owner in Canada named Stanley Plomish, who claimed he was from the planet Venus. In a nutshell, my letter said this man was a fraud because I was from Venus and, to quote myself, “I never heard of any Plomish family.”  Well, they printed my letter and when you read the next sentence you probably will be convinced I knew what I was talking about. I can live without coffee.

With the number of coffee corners around this country in particular, I have the feeling I must be one of five people on the planet who can take or leave this ubiquitous beverage. Now, I do appreciate a good cup of Joe, but I have never craved it or needed it to wake up in the morning as so many people do. Not that there’s anything wrong with a wake-up jolt. It’s just that I can’t really identify with coffee-lovers in general. I can, however, appreciate what yesterday’s ACS Weekly PressPac had to say about what some imaginative chemists in Brazil have been doing with unroasted coffee beans.

The scientists are reporting for the first time that these beans contain proteins that can kill insects and might be developed into new insecticides for protecting food crops against destructive pests. Their study, which suggests a new use for one of the most important tropical crops in the world, appears in ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, a bi-weekly publication.

Peas, beans and some other plant seeds contain proteins, called globulins, which ward off insects. Coffee beans contain large amounts of globulins, and Paulo Mazzafera and colleagues wondered whether those coffee proteins might also have an insecticidal effect. The high heat of roasting destroys globulins, so that they do not appear in brewed coffee.

Their tests against cowpea weevil larva, insects used as models for studying the insecticidal activity of proteins, showed that tiny amounts of the coffee proteins quickly killed up to half of the insects. In the future, scientists could insert genes for these insect-killing proteins into important food crops, such as grains, so that plants produce their own insecticides, the researchers suggest. The proteins appear harmless to people.

To read more about this innovation, go to beans. 

Image courtesy of Fernando Rebelo, Wikimedia Commons

There’s something about institutional food and me that doesn’t work. I guess it started with those scrambled eggs immersed in a lake of brown grease at summer camp. Next, it was those Swedish meatballs in the high school cafeteria. What was in that gravy? Finally, it was a whole pile of different foods at basic training for my hitch with the Air National Guard. I can’t remember any of the specific delicacies now, but I do know one thing: I lost nearly 25 pounds that brutally hot summer in San Antonio and it wasn’t all due to the heat and humidity.
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Don’t ask me why, but I’m suddenly thinking about my vegetable garden. For the past few weeks our backyard and my garden have been sitting there under a three-foot blanket of snow. Here in the nation’s capital metro area we’ve had the greatest snowfall for an entire winter already. I’ve measured more than 60 inches at our house. The average is 15 for winter season. Maybe I’m thinking ahead because by this morning, I almost can see the earth in the garden plot.
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