Off the Mark by Mark Parisi for March 05, 2023

Because you are just a bit too fruity, perhaps?

He’s into control!!!

Technically he is right……….

Knowledge is realising that those are fruits. Wisdom is knowing not to them in a fruit salad.

Well maybe tries to make a fruitcake next time.

He’s right. It’s strange the things we think are veggies that are actually fruits. They’re not sweet so who’d think they’re fruits?

She must have eaten it in your ‘fruit’ salad.

㋛ if you swapped the olives for some baby spinach or romaine – I’d eat it

The Supreme Court made tomatoes vegetables for the purpose of taxation.

Because you’re a prat?

Well thats one of the sucky parts of being an engineer. Knowing the technical definition. And occasionally being tone deaf to your audience.

The Inner Nerd comes out

He should look up “Pedant” in a dictionary.

And yet nobody is talking about how he got her home on the first date?  Or is that not so unusual these days?  If so that shows you how long I’ve been out of the “dating game!”

Always right, always alone.

I have an idea: Say everything starting with “Actually” to yourself.

He never gets a second date because he never produces on his first date.

I always find this argument additionally ironic because

1. I am a botanist, and therefore would do EXACTLY that kind of thing (in fact, I might put tomatoes, eggplants and cucumbers in a bowl and call them “mixed berries” (techincally a cucumber may be a pepo, but that is a subset of berries, and since cucumbers are a lot more juicy than, say, a squash and don’t have the hollow space in the middle, they may be berries in any sense.)

2. I actually did once bump into a near white near transparent cherry tomato that probably DID belong in a fruit salad, given that it was so sweet and so non “tomato-ey” in taste it could have passed for a grape if you weren’t looking at it (only time I regretted putting vinegar on a tomato.) Alas, it long gone now ( I DID save its seeds, but they went into my tomato file cabinet with everything else, and by the time I got around to trying to grow the contents of that out, over twenty years had passed and the seed was long since dead.)

BTW for more pedantic fun, the next time someone offers you mixed nuts, point out that, botanically, the hazels are the only nuts in there (peanuts are an indehiscent legume (it’s a fruit type as well as a botanical group), almonds, walnuts and pecans are drupes (almonds from a peach like fruit, walnuts and pecans from similar fruits in the hickory family) Brazil nuts come 18-20 per fruit (nuts have to be single seeded) cashews are a drupe again (the nut actually hangs down from the bottom of the “cashew apple” which is also edible) and macadamias are, again, a drupe.

Pedantic incelitis….a modern malady

Yay!

Pedantry salad never seems to go over well.

This would make a good Greek fruit salad

No one likes an pedant. I can vouch for this first hand

Does he need somebody to “mansplain” it to him?

A very important rule in relationships…. Don’t always try to prove how smart you are. Let it go.

Because you serve stuff that’s gross.

Nobody loves a knowitall…

“Beans, beans, the magical fruit”—

That line’s veracity’s been in dispute.

Forget the magic; they’re veggies, right?

Now let’s not be so quick to indict.

Biologists say that all a fruit needs

Is to be a ripe ovary, bearing seeds.

(OK, the last detail might not apply,

As that’s the one seedless grapes defy.)

With that definition, we find that cukes

And pumpkins and squash and (oh gad) zukes

All count as fruits, being types of gourds.

Garbanzos and okra as well. Are you floored?

What else qualifies? Tomatoes and corn,

Avocados and eggplants, sure as you’re born,

Plus olives and peppers of various kinds.

These wouldn’t occur to most people’s minds.

But if you’re absurd enough to decide

To make them a “fruit salad,” I think I’ll hide.

—me

You can be right…or you can be happy…take yer pick!

Because your fruit salad is bland.

Fruit smhmute, put ranch on it and it’s all (veg)edible.

Whoa, so much discussion about opinions of opinions of what’s common sense, what’s a vegetable, what’s a fruit, etc. Just have a beer, or a V8 glass. :D

Remember, tomatoes are a fruit when raw, a vegetable when cooked and a mess when mashed