Pigweed Delight: a rant.

The Prince of Wales, God bless him:

has opened the Forgotten Foods Network, a scheme run by Crops For The Future in Malaysia. It will study ancient food crops in the hope of improving yields in the face of climate change.

One such possible crop is Aztec pigweed.

Now, Aztec pigweed may be nutritious, tasty, resilient, and grow at a rate which makes bindweed look like a bonsai tree, but if there's one thing it needs, it's an agent.

I mean, Aztec pigweed? 

For a start, Aztecs are a) dead, and b) much too closely associated with human sacrifice; and then you have the weed bit - no one wants anything to do with weeds - and calling people pigs is going to get you precisely nowhere.

On the other hand, getting an agent costs you (at least) ten per cent, so here's a solution for free. Call the stuff by its other name, which is beautiful, mysterious, and romantic.

I mean, who could resist a steaming dish of amaranth?

Word To Use Today: amaranth. If you come across this word in poetry it will almost certainly mean flower that never fades. It comes from the Greek amarantos, unfading, from marainein, to fade.