Some "Vaccinium" species, such as the red huckleberry, are always called huckleberries. Other species may be called blueberries or huckleberries in different locations.
There is much confusion in naming of berries in American English. The 'garden huckleberry' ("Solanum melanocerasum") is not a true huckleberry but a member of the nightshade family.
The fruit of most species of huckleberry can be eaten. The berries are small and round. They are usually less than 5 mm in diameter and contain 10 seeds. Berries range in color from bright red, through dark purple, and into the blues. In taste the berries range from tart to sweet. They have a flavor similar to that of a blueberry. Huckleberries are well liked by many mammals such as bears and humans.
Cheesecake
A cheesecake is a dessert cake made of cheese (usually cream cheese but sometimes ricotta), eggs, and sugar. It often has a graham cracker crumb crust, sometimes held together by melted butter. The filling has a very heavy, smooth texture. It sometimes has sour cream to make it easier to shape and may have fruit flavoring such as strawberry, blueberry, or lemon. It is often topped with fresh fruit or chocolate.
Cheesecake is now often thought to be part of American cooking, but it has a long history. Cheese making began around 2000, and scientists who study people in the past have found cheese molds almost as old.
Cheesecakes are known to go back to at least Greece. In the 100s, the writer Athenaeus's "Dinner-Table Philosophers" mentioned the poet Callimachus (around the 200s) used to have a book by an "Aegimius" about the art of making cheesecakes (, "Plakountopoukón Sýngramma"). Cheesecake may have been given to the sportspeople during the Olympic Games, which started in 776.
Even before the Romans took over Greece, they had begun making cheesecakes as well. M. Porcius Cato's "Book on Farming" (written around 160) mentions three kinds of cakes', ', and ""for use as offerings to the gods. Placenta cakes were the closest to today's cheesecakes, since its crust and filling are made separately.
Europeans stopped using yeast and started adding beaten eggs to their cheesecakes around the 1700s. This made it taste more like a dessert than a cheesebread.
Cheesecake recipes were brought to the United States as people moved there from Europe. Most of today's kinds of cheesecake ("New York-style cheesecake") come from the kind created by William Lawrence of Chester, New York, in 1872. He was trying to make something like the soft French Neufchâtel cheese and ended up with a heavy, creamy "unripened cheese".
There is an all-garlic restaurant in Stockholm where they offer a garlic cheesecake.
Sonya Thomas holds the world record for eating the most cheesecakes in a given time. She ate 11 pounds of cheesecake in nine minutes.
Rhubarb
Rhubarb is one of about 60 plants in the genus Rheum, family Polygonaceae. The vegetable rhubarb is "Rheum rhabarbarum" (or "Rheum x hybridum"). The leaves are toxic, but the red stalks are baked in pies, with sugar to soften their tart flavor.
There are many varieties grown for eating. The drug "rheum" is prepared from the rhizomes and roots of another species, "R. officinale" or medicinal rhubarb.
Monkey
Monkeys are tree-dwelling (arboreal) simians. They are in the primate order. Monkeys are intelligent, social animals. Most monkeys have a tail, even if it is a short one.
The word "monkey" is a common-language term. It includes two rather different groups of primates. The big distinction is between Old World monkeys and New World monkeys. Some examples of monkeys are macaques, baboons, guenons and marmosets.
Both these groups are in the infraorder Simiiformes. That infraorder also includes the great apes and man.
Some monkeys live almost entirely in trees. Others live partly on the ground. Monkeys are mainly vegetarian, with a strong preference for fruit. However, they may eat a wide range of other food, including insects. Monkeys can live in forests and savannahs, but not in deserts. Some can live in snowy mountains, but more live in rainforests. There are none in the rainforests of Australia and New Guinea. Apparently, they never reached those islands.
Some monkeys are small, about long and in weight. Other monkeys are much larger, about long and in weight. A group of monkeys is called a "troop" of monkeys or a "tribe" of monkeys.
The two groups of monkeys live in different places: the "New World Monkeys" in South America and the "Old World Monkeys" live mainly in Africa and Asia. New World Monkeys are often smaller than Old World Monkeys. Monkeys have long arms and legs to help them swing from trees. Some monkeys' tails can wrap tightly around branches, almost like a "fifth limb". This type of tail is 'prehensile'.
The smallest known monkey is the pygmy marmoset. It is about 14-16cm in size (without the tail). It weighs about 120 grams. It lives in the treetops of rainforests in Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador. The largest known monkey is the mandrill. It can grow to about 1 m in size. Adults weigh up to 35 kg. The monkeys often climb with the help of their tails.
The word "monkey" might have come from a popular German story, "Roman de Renart" ("Reynard the Fox"). In there, the name of the son of Martin the Ape is "Moneke".
In Africa, monkeys can be sold as "bushmeat" (meat of wild animals). Monkey brains are eaten in some parts of Africa, South Asia, and China.
Notes
Civilization
Civilization (or civilisation) comes from the Latin word "civis" meaning someone who lives in a town. The Romans usually wanted conquered people to live in towns. When people are civilized, they have learned from the wisdom, skill and knowledge gained over centuries of human progress. The opposite of civilization is sometimes said to be entropy, barbarity, rudeness, or animal-like behavior.
A civilization is generally an advanced stage of organization. That means it has laws, culture, a regular way of getting food and protecting the people. Most civilizations have agriculture, and a system of government like monarchs or elections. They speak a common language, and usually have a religion of some kind. They teach their young the knowledge they need. All civilizations since the Sumerians and the Egyptians have had some kind of writing. This is because writing lets people store and build up knowledge.
Past societies that would be called more primitive compared to today, are still often referred to as civilizations for their time. The Roman Empire is an example of a past large civilization. It was governed from Rome. This empire once stretched from the Scottish borders to North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean. Their language was Latin.
Latin remained the preferred way of communication among educated people, long after their civilization had vanished. Some scientists, scholars and others still use Latin in the course of everyday work, even though the Roman civilization fell apart more than 1,500 years ago. The Roman civilization lasted almost 1000 years, but the Ancient Egyptian civilization was older and lasted longer.
One way a civilization ends is to become part of another civilization. For example, Ancient Egypt was conquered by foreigners who changed the country. It became part of Persian, Greek, Roman, and Islamic civilization. Another way is to go back to an earlier, simpler way of life. For example, Roman civilization collapsed in the Dark Ages. When people became more civilized again, it was the Medieval civilization.
Enlightenment (Buddhism)