This is Romanesco cauliflower, courtesy of our weekly produce box. According to some random guy I found in a Google search, "Romanesco’s flowering head grows in a naturally occurring fractal" and "is described as possessing a somewhat earthy taste that meshes elegantly with other flavors like garlic, white wine and even chili peppers."
This picture has been modified using the Photoshop poster edge filter. I know that many people hate hate hate all this filtering nonsense, but once in a while I think it looks good. I've even got another one in the queue for later in the year.
Why isn't it purple?
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??? Why do you ask? Does it look non-purple to you?
It looks white and gold, right?
Uh, it’s obviously purple and black.
darn it...now where's that up arrow...
No, it's a sailboat.
The filtering in this case obscures the fractal nature of the finer details, turning them into a sort of spider webby mishmash. The result is that you can only see about three orders of self-similarity, instead of the four or five that are normally visible.
Punxsutawney Phil worse than random at predicting the weather,
https://www.livescience.com/32974-punxsutawney-phil-weather-prediction-accuracy.html
Unless you reverse the formula, then he's 61-64% effective.
That’s because Punxsutawney Phil is non-fractal.
And if he were fractal, --everyday would be Groundhog Day?
Romanesco is one of my favorite veggies. It is tasty when roasted and is good in a quiche or an au gratin.
Purple? Give it time all the folks who dream up stunt veggies to entice home gardeners and farmer's market producers are likely working on it.
I find it more often referred to as Romanesco broccoli, FWIW. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanesco_broccoli
Which I've always though strange as it is clearly closer in taste and appearance to cauliflower but in Italy they always called it that.
I had Romanesco for the first time just a couple of weeks ago. Although my brother referred to it as broccoli, it definitely tasted more like cauliflower. I almost felt bad eating it, because it was so pretty.
"naturally occurring fractal"
Isn't that redundant?
Actually no, fractals are studied as a theoretical, mathematical concept. It is fascinating that naturally occurring fractals can be found in so many places (plants, geography, sounds,...), but in general fractals exist, or are constructed, in a completely “theoretical” sense, unrelated to nature.
I wouldn't worry about folks who complain about photographic filters. By the time an image goes through your camera sensor and gets displayed on all of our monitors old and new, high-res and low, calibrated or not, on phones and tablets, through various video adapters, the picture we see is only a suggestion of the actual cauliflower. I say prep your pix in any way that looks good to you. As a recovering hippie I applaud the poster edge. That cauliflower blows my mind.
And why would you want to recover from being a hippie - so this particular vegetable won't blow your mind?
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