"For 50 years, the Zaiger family has been striving for a perfect piece of fruit: juicy like a plum, but not as messy. Sweeter, too, with a cherry snap. The Zaigers own Zaiger's Inc. Genetics in Modesto, Calif., one of country's few commercial fruit breeders specializing in hybrid fruits. Next month, they will decide whether to grant any of the farmers who tasted their pluerry, named for its mix of plum and cherry, at a sampling last week the exclusive rights to grow the new fruit and sell it to supermarkets across the country. Hybrid fruit is a potentially lucrative, and delicious, market. Fruit growers are motivated by the lure of inventing a product that commands premium prices, from 50 cents to $1 or more per pound than conventional fruit. The breeders are also aiming for fruit that will have a longer harvest period to be available to shoppers longer." READ MORE

It's time for summer cakes! The cakes of summer, much like the boys of summer, aren't that filling but are fruity and they live at your house for a week until you're finally sick of them and then they get chopped up and put in trash bags. So named for the sound of Pacman, the Wocka Wocka Plumcot Yogurt Cake is verrrrryyyy loosely adapted from a plum cake by Nigel Slater. This is my standard summer cake, and it's fantastic, if I do say so myself. I would know, I'm eating it right now. There's just 12 easy steps! READ MORE

Yesterday Bloomberg's Caroline Baum wrote a column on the yield curve, which she claims is the best economic indicator available. Or at least that's what I think she said; although she took great care to explain it, my brain goes into automatic lockdown once anything more complicated than division is discussed. I appealed to the wise folk of the Internet to help sort it out for me, ideally using phrases like, "Let's say you have two apples," or "The yield curve is like a bowl of fruit." Reuters' Felix Salmon kindly obliged, going so far as to use those examples. It started to make sense! Then Awl pal Jasmine put it in terms that were even more understandable to me: terms that included "blow jobs." READ MORE