Duda Farm develops "celery straws," crazy straws bend their necks in shame

Hate to be the one that has to tell you this, but swilling your drinks with those lame ass plastic straws is officially passe. From now on it's celery straws or nothing for us, thanks to Florida's Duda Farm Fresh Foods and their l33t bioengineering skilz. Those farming crazies have managed to design stalks of celery that grow in a tube form, allowing for edible straws in your Bloody Mary or a peanut butter surprise inside this tubular wonder. Is there no limit to human ingenuity?

[Via Boing Boing]

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 7th 2007 10:45AM]

That is awesome!

Going to have to order some of those.



http://techtone.blogspot.com

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 7th 2007 10:37AM]

WOW!! No where on their site can i find out how to get them. I run a Sports Bar in San Francisco and this would be perfect!! If anyone has any information about this, please e-mail me. [e-mail]

Thanks!!

[tonicboy Posted Jan 7th 2007 2:41PM]

@Matt-

What's your bar? And is it Boston-friendly (damn that Green Sports Bar!!)?

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 7th 2007 11:17AM]

You can do the same thing with red vines or twizzlers, just bite the ends off.

[DragonPhyre Posted Jan 7th 2007 11:45AM]

Red Vines + Bloody Mary = Crazy Delicious??? >_

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 7th 2007 11:39AM]

This is interesting...

I wonder if they can do more, say, ones made from olives, or oranges... I work in a bar (part time) and I think these will be cool.

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 7th 2007 12:40PM]

Props to their bioengineering skills, but there's been a low-tech way of doing this for... well, forever.

Lovage, a close relative of celery, has tubular stems already. I remember someone calling into NPR's The Splendid Table a few years ago with the question "What do I do with lovage?" and the host's first answer was "Bloody Mary straws!"

Nurseries that sell a lot of herbs ought to have it. It's a really good herb anyway -- albeit really strong -- and is worth having around for non-straw purposes, too.

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 7th 2007 3:20PM]

Hmm, although it'd probably provide some flavor while drinking, I'm not totally sure that it would be much fun to *eat* your lovage straw. They strike me as pretty tough. It's still technically *edible*, I guess, but so is paste.

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 7th 2007 7:06PM]

If the Europeans had their way, and banned bioengineered food this never would have been possible. Yet another reason the USA is the greatest country in the world. Its junk like this that makes me a Patriot.

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 8th 2007 1:37AM]

This is pretty cool. I work in a bar, and sell tons of bloody marys every night. It doesn't have the "cool" factor of the mojito, but a bloody mary is cheap as hell. Give 'em a GE celery straw, and kick up the price :)

http://www.bacardimojito.com/home/default.aspx
(Have you ever seen an alcoholic beverage with a cooler website? :p

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 7th 2007 10:22PM]

Knuckles Sport Bar down on North Point and Taylor. We're attached to the Hyatt Fisherman's wharf.

We're an EVERYONE Bar. We had ppl here earlier for the NE/Jets game. Since we're on the Wharf, we get mostly tourist and ppl traveling.

We have 27 Flat/Plasma screens... we play every game that's on.

And I hate Green's too. Seems like it's a NY Giants Bar.

[macserv Posted Jan 8th 2007 2:07AM]

Aawesome. Just... awesome.

I DEMAND MORE TUBULAR VEGETABLES!

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 12th 2007 4:12PM]

Wow! We at Duda Farm Fresh Foods are really excited to see how much interest our DANDY celery straws are generating in cyberspace. Over the past week we have seen a lot of information generated about our product and we think we should weigh in on the discussion in order to answer some of the questions we’ve seen and correct some of the information that has been posted.

First of all, our DANDY celery straw is not engineered in any way. It is a naturally-grown celery stalk with a hollow core. Using traditional plant breeding methods, we cross pollinated one of our own celery varieties with a hollow-stemmed wild celery – found on one of our farms in Texas. The results of this cross were selected again and again and re-crossed with traditional celery until a larger, more mild-tasting, hollow-stemmed celery was produced. It has taken a number of years to develop the celery straw we have today.

While we are very proud of our celery straw, it is by no means as sleek as the photos we have seen floating around on various blogs. Our celery straw still resembles a stalk of celery – just a hollow stalk. Photos are available if you would like to post them on your site.

For those of you who are interested in knowing how to get your hands on our straws, we are still test marketing this product to find the right channels for distribution. We have seen definite interest from both the foodservice and retail areas and we are actively pursuing both markets. Our main push will be through foodservice outlets and we will continue educating buyers for hotels, restaurants, and other high-end, premium market places about the benefits of this specialty item: it is unique; environmentally sound; a healthy alternative to a straw; adds taste to any drink it is paired with; and is versatile - piped with any filling, it can be served as an appetizer.

Foodservice and retail buyers can contact us at [e-mail]. And, we encourage all you consumers out there to ask your retail and foodservice suppliers to start offering DANDY celery straws. Have a DANDY day!