Word: seed
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...consumption of sunflower seeds there are several schools of thought. Biologists, I regret to say, dissect them. "Commonly referred to as a seed," intones the laboratory instructor, "the fruit is an achene (uh-KEEN). Make a longitudinal section, and note the massive embryo, the large, fleshy cotyledons. Is any endosperm present?" And without looking to see, he slips one into his mouth...
Achene as biologists may be on calling a seed a fruit, those who pursue the seed celestial know a seed when they seed one. Lovers of the bloody thumb can buy half pound packs, roasted but unsalted, for 39 cents at Posin's on 16th Street in Washington. These seeds are fresh but you have to crack them yourself. The height of sunflower comes in little glass jars at Cardullo's: roasted, salted, shelled, and sealed, four and a quarter ounces for 57 cents...
...true savorer of the seed would trust another to roast his kernels for him. Yet few desire the reddened fingers and tattered tongue that comes of shelling them oneself. "If you are ever forced into a sheller's market, however, I suggest you improvise an anvil out of the nearest table and a hammer out of an empty Coke bottle. With luck and experience, you will be able to shell as many as ten in a minute...
When you get home, you will want carefully to roast the seeds on any metal tray, if necessary in the bottom of a tea pot. But even as you walk you may reflect that not for nothing is the hero of Spanish romance, the center of a thousand battles, legends and dramas, the perpetual inspiration to duty and right, that transcendent entity known as El Seed...
...there is indeed a new Puritanism, it has its own Cotton Mather. Man, says Norman Mailer, "knows at the seed of his being that good orgasm opens his possibilities and bad orgasm imprisons him." Many people take this issue very seriously: next month, the American Association of Marriage Counselors will hold a three-day conference on the nature of orgasm...