Will You Pore?

Mary Mac’s Tea Times Newsletter describes itself as “a continuing journey into the pleasures of afternoon tea.” That means meditations on the leisurely grace of Victorian ways, recipes for everything from finger sandwiches to pomanders, the protocol of the queen’s garden party in England and all sorts of readers’ theme ideas for tea parties. It appears six times a year; for a subscription, send $15 to P.O. Box 841, Langley, Wash. 98260-0841. (Those who just can’t wait for third-class delivery can add $4.50 for first class.)

The Big Caper

Capers are actually the pickled flower buds of the caper plant. If not picked as buds, they go on to become caper berries (in Spanish, taprots ), which can be pickled too--they look like big striped grapes and taste like a cross between capers and pickled okra. They’re great as appetizers and garnishes and downright intriguing in martinis. Greater Galilee Gourmet caperberries run around $7 for 12 ounces, available for instance at Erewhon Markets.

Green Stuff

Bill Clinton has declared, perhaps pointedly, that broccoli is his favorite vegetable, so Washington can expect big sales of “The Big Broccoli Book” by Georgia Downard (Random House: $10). It’s nothing but broccoli recipes--50 of them.

Unjarring News

Jars and bottles outnumber cans four to one, so it’s sort of a surprise that Open Up is the first power jar opener. It fits under a cabinet or shelf; you stick the recalcitrant jar up into the cone and it slowly turns with three to five times the power of a human hand. It uses four D batteries and runs under $40 at department and specialty stories.

Tuna, the Power Fish

The world’s two industrial powerhouses, Japan and the United States, between them consume most of the world’s tuna catch. The Japanese, who prefer tuna raw, catch half of all tuna and also buy up a lot of other countries’ catches. We eat almost a third of the world catch in canned form, which we must modestly point out is the more industrial way.

The All-Chocolate Diet

Diets based on replacing meals with nutritious milkshakes have been around for a long time, but here’s one with a twist: Nestle’s Sweet Success is made by a full-time chocolate company, and all the flavors are chocolate (milk chocolate, dark fudge, chocolate chip, chocolate almond, chocolate raspberry trifle). Three times a day you make a shake with a cup of skim milk and half a cup of ice; other than that you eat two snacks and a balanced dinner. It will be available in supermarkets in the western United States in January.

Ginseng From the Heartland

Marathon County, Wis., is the world’s third-largest exporter of ginseng, right after China and Korea; almost 90% of the American ginseng crop (about 650 tons a year) comes from there. Ginseng is big money, too--$38 to $52 an ounce--so growers sleep in their sheds with loaded shotguns against ginseng rustlers. American ginseng is nothing new, by the way. A hundred years ago, there was a veritable ginseng “gold rush” in Upstate New York.