I was putting away some onions in the root cellar when I found this:
Aren’t sprouted potatoes great? Most foods, when they go bad, either get disgusting or boring. The potato is the only one I can think of that becomes unequivocally cool.
Iris did not agree. Now, Iris is generally not scared of anything. She’ll try to pet a snarling dog. She’ll fling herself down the big slide. She invented a game called “spooking” where I hide in her bedroom in the dark and then jump out and grab her.
But a sprouted potato? Terrifying. I waved it at her and she cowered like I was holding a deadly weapon. Then I showed her it was safe. I patted it. I told her the sprouts were smooth. “Do you want to touch it?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Iris. She inched closer. When she got about five feet away, she retreated into the living room and said, “No.”
So I put the potato on the couch and let the matter drop. Later I saw this:
This is not the first sprouted potato incident around here. I am a serial potato sprouter.
Looks like Edward Scissor-Potato!
I have to admit, I’m a serial garlic sprouter.
I’m kvelling for you.
I can never throw away something that’s trying so hard to live. When a yukon gold started striving for life a few months ago I put it in a pot of dirt and watched it sprout almost twenty inches straight up before it fell over and turned all viney. Quite a conversation piece.
Go, potato! Go!
Lore
L.G., I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve already thrown the potato away. Then Iris threw some food at dinner, so I sold her on eBay. New Year’s resolution: be less rash.
Just as well. Otherwise you’d end up with countless pots of sprouting former-produce cluttering the patio, and a kid who someday will have to be sent to college.
Lore
Oh how I wish I’d documented the Amazing Sprouting Onion of 2006! This thing was a full-on PLANT. You could watch it devour the oniony food source it was growing out of by the hour. It was trying reeeeeally hard to make a flower…finally, though, it tipped into the kitchen mini-blinds, got pinched, wilty…and then we went out of town for a week and a half so I just chucked it.
It was more than 2 feet tall by the end, though…for an onion’s reach must exceed its grasp, or what’s a heaven for?