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I love my house, but it is a challenge to find a place for everything in a compact home. I have taken to hanging my root vegetables in my cellar stairwell for lack of space anywhere else. Unfortunately, they are still exposed to some light, and that causes problems. Potatoes turn green, and you really
shouldn't eat them at that point. Garlic and onions sprout and get mushy inside, carrots get rubbery. I would like to see the technology that causes glasses to darken in sunlight applied to plastic bags to make them U.V. sensitive. When they sense light, they darken to protect vegetables that must be stored in less than ideal conditions. I'd even pay for them.
You'd have to eat several pounds of green potatoes
http://www.snopes.c...gredient/potato.asp
[normzone, May 16 2008]
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//I would like to see the technology that causes glasses to darken in sunlight applied to plastic bags to make them U.V. sensitive.// What's wrong with black plastic bags? Or brown paper bags? |
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Because then you can't see what's in them. It's inconvenient and annoying to have to open a bunch of bags to find what 's needed. Especially when you're standing in a stairwell. |
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You could label your pegs... |
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//You could label your pegs...
theleopard, Nov 30 2006// |
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Or you could label your bags. |
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Or you could lather your bags with sunblock. |
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The light-reactive properties do not blacken; they merely darken the bag so one could still tell what the contents are while providing the necessary protectant. This is an easy fix- buy the bags and hang them- no need to make labels, label pegs, poke holes or feel around to see the contents- give me a break here, guys! |
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I don't think you will find many "breaks" here at the Half Bakery. |
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Well you'll find more 'breaks' (680) than 'brakes' (375) [chef]. |
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feeling and guessing the contents of a black bag of vegetables seems like the germ of an idea for a xmas party game. |
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Count me in! Oooh I'm gonna feel me the biggest potato... |
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Photochromatic coatings don't come cheap. Only reasonably top-end sunglasses and spectacles are photochromatic. |
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Also, are you certain that your root vegetables will keep well? Maybe it's just because I'm a stone's throw from the equator, and we have permanently high humidity here, but my root vegies don't keep past about a week, even when locked away in a drawer. |
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{Texticle}- we all assume you have the biggest potato (s).Or do you call 'em yams? |
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I think I have a carrot here... |
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I have the biggest tuber. |
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{Po} thanks, but what I really need right now is a nice , soft bun. |
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Why not just keep them in an opaque
plastic bag and just hand-feel your
potatoes? Is it not possible to feel if your
potatoes are ripe? They were originally
underground anyway.. |
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Potatoes don't get "ripe", they just get big. So big as to mistake one by feel for a rutabaga or yam. And how to differentiate from the errant sweet potato or beet? Clarity of bag is the answer. With a degree of darkness. |
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That's why I love written language!!! They
always help in situations like these! Okay..
bag #1: potatoes, bag #2 yams, bag #3:
(Joke placed here) |
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//Potatoes don't get "ripe", they just get big// I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure that potatoes don't get bigger when removed from the soil (and the rest of the growing plant). actually they start to shrink. |
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gawd, I need a life. here I am discussing the size of potatoes with people I'm not ever likely to meet. :) |
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For some reason I thought that this was a skin protecting product for those in need of the Darwin Award. "See, you put this plastic bag around your head and face to protect your skin from the harmful rays of the sun. Cool, huh?" |
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ok ok so the bag
the bag gets dark and
you can like put it on
but then later the bag gets stressed
and like dis-integrates
ya no? from the photo-crom |
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Spudses turn green and posionous in too much light potato |
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This idea should be bakeable using a correctly colored bag. Green would work. Photosynthesis uses red wavelengths, and there is no reason that tubers should turn green and start to photosynthesize if they are in a spectrum of light they cannot use. A green bag should filter out everything but green light, which plants don't use (they reflect it, and look green). We can see green light, and so [Rm Brz] should be able to look thru the bag and distinguish parsnips from rutabegas. With a really good green bag, you should be able to hang your tubers in the kitchen. |
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Bah, I was expecting a plot to send legions upon legions of plastic bags into the wild - let them dance and frolick and protect small areas of the earth from harmful UV light. |
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I think bungston has found the clue. photosynthesis does not occur at every part of the spectrum of visible light. so the bag only needs to filter the purples,blues and oranges (UV is not involved in photosynthesis it seems, so the sunglasses technique won't work. I'm wondering though, if this applies to roots: not much photosynthesis in there i would guess, since they're under the earth. |
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It's not necessarily photosynthesis that
is the problem. Potatoes, onions and
suchlike remain dormant until they
think it is worth growing, and light is
one of the stimuli that activate growth. |
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However, it is not usually
photosynthesis itself which is the
trigger - plants have a variety of light-
sensitive pigments to tell them when to
break dormancy. I'm not sure what
wavelengths these photosensory
pigments respond to, but they are
probably not all the same as the
optimal wavelengths for
photosynthesis. Indeed, some seeds
and tubers respond to light filtering
through other plant's leaves or through
a few millimetres of soil, and are
adapted to respond to those
wavelengths which are best transmitted
through such media. |
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Incidentally, there's an Asian fruit which
takes this to extremes. It germinates
only after it has been through the gut of
an orang-utan (orangs eat the fruit and
excrete the seeds), so that it can be
sure of starting out with a bunch of
fertiliser. |
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How does it know it's sitting in orang
poo? How does it know it's not still in
the orang, or still inside the uneaten
fruit? The seed's germination is actually
inhibited by most wavelengths of light,
but is activated by a single narrow band
of red light. To germinate, it needs to
be exposed only to that red light, and
not to the rest of the spectrum. |
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It turns out that the pigments (mainly
stercobilins) in orang poo absorb a
wide range of wavelengths, but
selectively transmit just the right
wavelength of red light (a handy fact to
know, if you're a photographer who's
mislaid his deep red filter in the middle
of the Malaysian jungle - orang poo will
do). And yes, you guessed it, this is
exactly the wavelength which the seed
needs to see in order to germinate. It
won't germinate in the fruit (no light at
all), nor inside the orang's digestive
tract (ditto) - only in the orang poo.
Isn't nature wonderful? |
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Oh, all right then. You win. |
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