A post about vegetables and math

Has it really been a month and a half since I last posted? I haven't had anything good to blog about lately, so I will bore you all with a post about my latest fascination: romanesco broccoli.

I saw this creepy-yet-beautiful veggie in my co-worker's seed catalog, and was drawn to it. Laura Anderson from the New York Times food blog describes it best as "the lovechild of cauliflower and broccoli with some alien DNA thrown in." I didn't really care about its taste; I'm far too nerdy for that. Instead, I immediately wondered if its spiral design followed the Fibonacci sequence.



For those of you who aren't huge nerds, the Fibonacci sequence is a pattern of numbers that is often found in nature. Matt says that is because it is the most efficient sequence. It's found in pinecones, sunflowers, artichokes, and the beach in Half Moon Bay, California. If you want to geek out, you can read about it on Wikipedia. The broccoli is also an example of a fractal, because all those little knobby things are exact replicas of the big knobby things. I am sure there are more technical ways to describe it, but I'm not a mathematician--that's Matt's role in this relationship.



Foodies say that romanesco broccoli has a soft and slightly nutty flavor. Would you try it?