in the early 1950s my Mom had to wash all the vegetables that came into our house with a brush and lye soap since human waste was the favorite fertilizer used there... make your best decision.

I do recall a moment when I went down to Panama and made it a point to drop in to see a friend. She invited me to stay for dinner. She was making Sancocho, which is a delicious chicken or meat soup that is season with an herb called culantro. When I was a kid, the herb would grow wild behind our yard and my grandmother would go out to find the leaves for our soup, so I looked forward to having some homemade soup. My friend only had to walk out fifteen feet to find one and plucked some leaves, saying, "This is Baru flavored culantro."

Well, I figured this was a variety of leaf I wasn't familiar with. Something new that must have developed while I was gone.

When dinner was ready we all sat down to eat. It was, as was the custom, a table outside on the porch. As we gathered around the table the dog got a little over-excited and came a little too close to the food and my friend yells out, "Get off, Baru!"

That's when I put two and two together.