You Say Tomato, I Say Mutato

It's too hot in Chicago to do much more than drink cold sun tea. If you're similarly indoors and looking for some real amusement on the internet, keep reading after the photo.

First, a couple of early birds from the roof garden. At left, the Anna Russian heirloom, possibly the lowest acid I've ever tasted. At right, Amish paste.


Uli Westphal is an artist whose work includes stunning photographs of wonderfully weirdo fruits and vegetables (we're hoping for a few oddballs ourselves this year).

Click here for his Mutato Archive and enjoy the diversity.

The Mutato-Archive is a collection of non-standard fruits, roots and vegetables, displaying a dazzling variety of forms, colours and textures, that only reveal themselves when lawfully enforced standards cease to exist. The complete absence of botanical anomalies in our supermarkets has caused us to regard the consistency of produce presented there as natural. Produce has become a highly designed, monotonous product. We have forgotten, and in many cases never experienced, the way fruits, roots, and vegetables can actually look (and taste). The Mutato-Project serves to document, preserve and promote these last remainders of agricultural diversity.