Vegetable, Fruit Other

I've been doing a bit of research into flora... specifically what we call vegetable, fruit and... stuff... And the truth is, a lot of things that I have called vegetable... and which we all call "vegetable" are actually fruits. Oh sure, we know about tomatoes... but what about peppers, cucumbers, eggplant, sqaush, pumpkin, avocado, beans, peas... Yeah... I wondered the same thing... what's left in vegetable after all that!

Veggies are technically edible plant stuff, usually, leaf, stem or root... There are always exceptions of course... like the artichoke which is a flower bud of a plant that looks like a huge thistle... Go figure... And something like rhubarb, which I've always thought of as a fruit... is actually technically a vegetable, since it ain't all that sweet and it is the stalk of the rhubarb plant...

Fruits, technically are the structure of a plant that contains its seeds... except for pineapple and bananas which are bred without seeds, but are still fruits...

Then, of course, we have nuts, seeds with a hard casing... like coconuts... presumably peanuts, etc... Although technically, I guess they could also be classified as fruits...

Finally, the ones that don't fit... like mushrooms... nope, not a vegetable... they are a fungus, which is something else entirely...

Anyhow, when I look at our diet... rich in tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers... I don't think we are eating all that many "vegetables" and an awful lot of fruit! Which is probably why the Canada Food Guide lumps them all together... Call it what you will... most of them are darn yummy... even eggplant... And our next foray into the wild world of veggies is going to be the dreaded... artichoke... We've both eaten them and liked them... but never cooked them... There are hour long videos on the internet on how to properly prepare an artichoke, so this should be interesting....