Prepared by the Office of Public Affairs
Georgia Department of Agriculture
Tommy Irvin, Commissioner
www.agr.georgia.gov
Question: What are giblets?
Answer: Giblets are the heart, liver and gizzard of a turkey, chicken or other fowl. Many cooks use these along with the bird’s neck in making giblet gravy.
Q: What exactly is chia?
A: Chia is a type of salvia (Salvia columbariae) native to California, Baja California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah and New Mexico. When its seeds get wet they form a mucilaginous coating that has allowed the species to expand its range and popularity by adhering to terra cotta figurines of rams, turtles, Homer Simpson and Garfield.
Q: Is a pumpkin a fruit or a vegetable?
A: From a botanical standpoint, a pumpkin is a fruit. Botanically, a fruit is the seed-bearing product of a plant (or potentially seed-bearing product as there are seedless varieties). The green beans, cucumbers, peppers, squash, English peas, ears of corn, tomatoes and eggplants you eat (or should eat) are all fruits according to the botanical definition. However, your mother is not going to say “Eat your fruits!” if you don’t clean these items off your plate. She is going to say “Eat your vegetables!” That is because Mama and other practitioners of the culinary arts do not use botanical definitions when preparing a meal. In their vernacular, and in the vernacular of nearly everyone else, these “botanical fruits” are considered vegetables. The pumpkin is also usually considered a vegetable.
In the kitchen and at the dining-room table, the term “fruit” is generally used to refer to the sweet (usually), fleshy, seed-bearing or potentially seed-bearing products of a plant (usually a tree, shrub or woody vine) that are often, but not always, eaten fresh or as a dessert or sweet dish. Yes, a pumpkin may be used in pies, but you’re not likely to see anybody chomping on a raw one they way they do an apple, even a tart apple. Pumpkins may also be roasted with other vegetables such as beets and garlic or made into savory soups. Neither of these dishes or variations thereof would be considered a fruit dish.
From a horticultural standpoint, which would refer to how they are grown, pumpkins would also be considered vegetables. That is to say they are annual crops grown and cultivated in a similar manner to other vegetables and not on woody plants that live for numerous years such as blueberries, grapes, peaches and other fruits.
In a similar vein, watermelons and cantaloupes are botanically classified as fruits. From a culinary standpoint, they are often considered fruits because of their sweetness and how they are used. (You’ll find both in “fruit salads.”) Horticulturally, they would be considered vegetables because of how they are grown.
When you step away from the botanical definition of “fruit” and get into the common, non-scientific use of the word and add the non-scientific term “vegetable,” the discussion over whether something is considered a fruit or a vegetable gets muddier, and there are exceptions to the attempts to explain the reasoning why something is called what it is. Avocados, for example, are a lot less sweet than pumpkins. Guacamole can hardly be thought of as a fruity dish. Botanically, the avocado is a fruit. Horticulturally, it is a fruit (it grows on trees.) In the kitchen it is used like a vegetable, but it is not called a vegetable. Ditto for olives.
If you are confused, forget the labels and just eat the pumpkins and enjoy them.
If you have questions about services or products regulated by the Georgia Department of Agriculture, visit our website at www.agr.georgia.gov or write to us at 19 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, Room 227, Atlanta, GA 30334; e-mail info@agr.state.ga.us or telephone 1-800-282-5852.
