What you see: Purple sprouts and stalks emerging from your sweet potato. What it is: A sprouting sweet potato. Eat or toss: Eat! A sweet potato with a small
Weirdly fluffy sage
What you see: Dried sage that looks oddly fluffy What it is: Rubbed sage, which is made by literally rubbing and sieving sage to a fluffy consistency Eat or
Onion filled with tiny sprouts?
What you see: Tiny whitish, yellowish onion things falling out of your onionWhat it is: The onion is sprouting!Eat or toss: Eat! Why does this red onion have
Freezer fail: Did these items warm up too much to be safe?
If you discover that your freezer has been open for 10 long, warm, tragic hours, how do you decide what’s still safe to eat and what definitely needs to be
A hole with a “window” in your spinach?
What you see: A spinach leaf with a hole that’s not quite a hole; there's a layer of clear tissue remaining. What it is: Window-paning! Evidence of a picky
Black pattern inside a raw potato?
What you see: A black pattern inside your potato. What it is: A number of issues cause black areas to form in potatoes; the potato pictured above most likely
White thing stuck to your kale leaf
What you see: A white capsule on the underside of your kale leaf. What it is: The cocoon of a pupating insect. Eat or toss: Flick off the cocoon, give the
A plum that’s brownish inside?
What you see: Brownish discoloration inside a plum What it is: Likely flesh browning from too-cold storage Eat or toss: The plum doesn’t taste good, right? It’s
Why did this orange turn purple?!?
What you see: An orange slice that looked normal and, many hours later, turned purple. What it is: A pigment in the orange reacted with iron on the knife used
EatOrToss’s Rachael Jackson writes about freezer safety for the Washington Post
Check out my latest in the Washington Post, about the sad day when our freezer stopped freezing and how you can avoid or mitigate your own soggy, defrosted
The tale of the roughed up plum
What you see: Rough, pockmarked plum skin with sunken areasWhat it is: Dehydration and pitting probably caused by poor storage; this plum may have also suffered
Bumps on your eggshell
What you see: Hard, sand-like bumps or a gritty texture on your egg’s shell. What it is: Calcium carbonate deposits. Eat or toss: The egg is fine. Large
She cut open a pepper and water gushed out?!?
What you see: Water spilling out of your pepper when you slice it open What it is: It’s hard to say for certain, but if the pepper otherwise looks fine, it
Hard, white area in onion?
What you see: An onion with a thick, white “core” What it is: An especially prominent onion stem Eat or toss: Cut around the stem area; it will be too thick and
Green areas inside your carrot?
What you see: Green inside your carrot What it is: Chlorophyll that developed after excess sun exposure Eat or toss: If it’s just a green ring, like you see
Yep, that greenish “dirt” on your kale is caterpillar droppings
What you see: A greenish brownish, maybe wet "dirt" on your kale leaves. What it is: Caterpillar poop. Eat or toss: If the kale is otherwise healthy looking,