Around the web

The Los Angeles Times reports that a 75.75 pound Alaskan rutabaga has taken the title of the world's largest rutabaga in the "Heaviest Fruit and Vegetables" category of the Guinness World Records book. [NOTE: Last year, in a controversial decision, the Guiness judges refused to accept a 378.22 pound rutabaga grown in ARSI's experimental labs on the ground that it was "genetically engineered."]

Staff writer Walter Nicholls of the Washington Post, in an article headlined Chefs Transform the Unlovable Rutabaga, notes that "the rutabaga is having a moment in the spotlight." Upscale restaurants are now serving rutabagas with lobster, shrimp stew and "creamy rutabaga soup laced with maple syrup and seasoned with cayenne pepper." Nicholls mentions ARSI's sustained efforts to rehabilitate the rutabaga, but only in passing.

Meanwhile, North Dakota Public Radio's Plains Folk, raises doubts about the credibility of Forest Grove's claim to be the "Rutabaga Capital of the World Since 1951." A hint of envy here, perhaps?

GRAPHIC: John Evans of Palmer, Alaska, with one of his giant rutabagas. He and Mary Evans, his spouse, have accumulated a vast number of prizes for the quantity and quality of their giant vegetable crops.