Ask Professor Produce

I recently read that there are 200 kinds of bananas, but Americans and Europeans eat only one variety. Wouldn't it be great to branch out? Is this even vaguely feasible? -Anonymous

The Professor is startled at the voracious appetite we Americans have for the Cavendish variety of banana. Why must we have 18 different kinds of apples, or a wide array of oranges every winter? Sheesh, we even demand specialty onions. But bananas? The Cavendish is good enough, I guess. Day in. Day out. Oh boy!

Moreover, this obsession with the Cavendish will ultimately lead to its extinction, according to the Rome-based International Plant Genetic Resources Insititute. Sadly, the Cavendish has become a plant with unvarying genetic sameness from 10,000 years of selective breeding (humans have apparently been bizarrely obsessed with the banana for millennia). Within the decade, according to the Institute, the Cavendish die out due to its helplessness against certain predator fungi and its ever decreasing lifespan (Cavendish tree life spans have dwindled from 30 to 2 years).

Have no fear. Some enterprising young banana-geneticist is no doubt knitting us a new banana variety even as we speak.

But to get to the meat of your questions, Anonymous, while there may be 200 kinds of bananas, most of them are more like plantains than the super sweet Cavendish (hence the obsession). Wedge Produce has carried the rojo or red banana in the past, and while the Professor finds it superior to the Cavendish, it's rather like the difference between cream and milk: Better, sure, but not that different. We've also carried baby or cocktail bananas, but they're really just little Cavendishes. Both rojo and cocktail bananas had lots of quality issues, so they're availability has been spotty in the last year. But that pretty much exhausts the varieties available in the U.S. market.

While this may not address your desire to buy different varieties of bananas, starting some time in December, Wedge Produce will be carrying Fair Trade organic bananas on a regular basis. It's an exciting program that will funnel your Cavendish-crazed dollars to Central American farms employing good labor and environmental practices.

Speaking of politically correct bananas, Edward Brown is leaving the Wedge after 85 years of service to the co-op (well, it seems that long). Edward's mark on the Wedge and the Produce Department in particular will probably be permanent, and his role as resident visionary has consistently kept the Wedge three steps ahead of the organic foods market nationally. He'll be sorely missed.

This has to be mentioned here, in this column, because Edward was the original Professor Produce. As frequently happens with superhero personas, Edward, tired of making up produce questions to ask himself, passed the title onto me shortly after I started at the Wedge. But, as he did with the positions of Produce Manager and Warehouse Director, Edward Brown defined the role.

I always wanted to roast Edward, a la those Dean Martin slosh-fests where people crawl out of the woodwork to tell their stories about the roastee. Like bigfoot tales in the Pacific Northwest, it seems everyone in the co-op world has an Edward story. I never got to hold the Edward Brown Roast-a-thon, but here's one of my Edward stories in honor of his departure.

Like most people, I didn't know what to make of Edward when I first started here. He was a Wisconsin guy with a co-op/hippie background like me, but with this exhausting, manic energy that frequently made you feel like you were an extra in a Marx Brothers movie. Just a few days into my first week at the Wedge, I was in the back Produce room prepping lettuce, when Edward came storming in with a truckload of food from his car (that's how it was done, back before Edward created Co-op Partners Warehouse). Anyway, he finished slotting the delivery in the Produce cooler, and then, in a rushing, machine-gun whisper, told me, "OK! Barth? If the cops call? Tell them you don't know anything about the celery? OK? Can you do that for me? You don't know anything about the celery! Great! Thanks, buddy! I gotta run!" A second later he was barreling out the door.

Well. I didn't know anything about the celery. So I was cool with that.

As it turned out, a case of celery had fallen out of his trunk on Lyndale Avenue, and when Edward stopped to retrieve it, a woman had already pulled over and was hauling the case of celery out of the road and into her car. What she intended is still a mystery, but you know what free celery does to some people's minds.

Not to be stiffed out of his celery, Edward jumped into the road and told her the case was his. But the woman wouldn't give it back! With traffic zipping around them, an argument ensued, and finally Edward wrestled the case out of her hands and threw it in his car. He took off with her shouting that she had his license plate and was going to call the police.

Until this day, I'm proud to report, I never told anyone what I knew about the celery.

Professor Produce wishes you the best in whatever mad schemes you pursue next, Edward. All I know is that The Wedge will be a slightly more boring place without you.