I read an article in the Chicago Tribune where the author described what all sorts of food words brought to her mind. Probably "banana" jokes are the most universal..."banana noses," etc.

She thinks of a certain friend when she sees a garlic clove, as this friend taught her how to peel a garlic clove without all the tedium (I need to learn this!) For Shu and me, garlic brings to mind a great story about the importance of words. We were at a couple's home for dinner, and the wife was making an Italian dish that called for "2 cloves of garlic." Well, this dear, friend had a huge mound (maybe 6 inches high) of garlic pieces cut. She said to me, "The worst part of this dish is cutting up all the garlic." I said, "That's much more than 2 cloves of garlic." "No," she replied, "That's 2 cloves." We argued for a bit and then brought in our husbands, 2 lawyers. It turned out she cut up, not 2 cloves, but 2 bulbs of garlic. They still steadfastly argued that the bulb was a clove. So, we got out a dictionary, and, of course, they were wrong. They admitted they were wrong....but....they had made the recipe before this way, and they said it had been good. So, they insisted on putting 2 bulbs of garlic in the sauce, and I, for one, had no sauce that night!

Any other words about food that stimulate your imagination...or a story?

Okay....so no good stories about food words, huh?

Well, there were several in this article. I liked the one where one woman recalls an old boyfriend every time she removes the core from iceberg lettuce...banging the lettuce on the counter! Hmmm! That reminds me of my aerobics class when we do kick boxing. In order to get the force needed, we are to think of someone we want to kick. Now...that is fun!

I am reminded of a genre of painting in the Renaissance, that involved crafting human likenesses out of fruits and vegetables. (Closer to our own century there was a Peter Gabriel music video (pop promo) that was done by the Aardvark guys (of Wallace and Gromet fame) that did the same with Gabriel's likeness in clay animation.