I asked a colleague whose wife is expecting how their baby was coming along.
"It's the size of a jicama," he said.
When did gestation get mixed up with greengrocers?
It seems Babycenter.com sends expectant parents weekly in utero updates: "Poppyseed to pumpkin: How big is your baby?"
I take it as a sign of these foodie times that Babycenter compares growing fetuses to produce, some of it rather obscure before the Food Network helped bring kumquats (10 weeks), Chinese cabbage (28 weeks) and Crenshaw melons (36 weeks) to mainstream supermarkets -- and wombs.
Three weeks have passed since I heard about my colleague's jicama, so I checked back. His wife is at 35 weeks now, just five weeks or so away from delivering their beautiful, bouncing pumpkin.
"We're up to a honeydew now!" he said. "Good thing we got the bigger car seat."
Full-term jicama. Sun file photo