Day 162 -- A Big Old Can Of Vegan Worms

Had I ever had the chance to try poleta, I probably would have.  After all, its main ingredient is corn and I love corn!  I've never tasted grits either, which is made from the same thing -- corn -- as polenta is.  A few months ago, I bought a bag of Bob's Red Mill Polenta/Grits and the bag has been sitting unopened in my pantry since then.  Today, I decided to try new recipe that calls for baked polenta.

Of course, no new food enters my mouth without me finding some odd question to ponder and polenta is no different.  The question of the day -- Is corn a grain, a legume or a vegetable?  This becomes important because I've been trying to balance my daily consumption of all three in the hopes that I get the proper amount of protein.  In finding the answer, I had to define all three and I threw fruit in there for good measure.

.Grains are derived from the seeds of a plant, either whole or ground.  So, corn is indeed a grain.  But what about legumes?  Aren't they also seeds?  In order to qualify as a legume, you must start life inside a pod, like peas, peanuts, beans.  But what about nuts?  Are nuts legumes?  They begin life inside a pod.  But the major difference between legumes and nuts are that nuts store fat instead of sugar.  Also legumes grow from a bush and nuts grow from a tree.  Hence the reason peanuts are not really a nut but a legume.

Let's toss a little fruit into the salad, shall we?  If we eat the part that protects the seed, then we are eating a fruit.  Apples, peaches, pears -- we eat the flesh but not the seed.  Tomatoes are also technically a fruit, except that we also consume tomato seeds and most people think tomatoes are a vegetable.  However, I have learned that we call a lot of fruits vegetables such as  pumpkin, squash, cucumbers, green beans and all types of peppers.  So let me get this straight.  The green part of a green bean is a fruit and the bean inside is a legume?

So what's left for vegetables?  It turns out that vegetables are not a botanical term but a culinary terms.  Radishes, celery, carrots, and lettuce do not have seeds (that are part of what we eat) and so they are grouped as vegetables.  They aren't fruit, legumes or nuts, so they have to be vegetables.

So now, I'm pretty thoroughly confused.  This article should help, but when it mentioned that nuts were fruit, I realized that I opened a big old can of worms -- which I happen to know are not vegetables, or fruit, or even legumes.  I think I just need to make the damn polenta and stop thinking so much about what's in it.