Everybody knows that when potatoes go green you should not eat them because they are poisonous. Last week I was listening to a podcast and heard that information again, this time from a scientist. I was happy to hear that I have not been chucking out green potatoes for nothing all these years.
But surely not everybody chucks out green potatoes. There must be some people with bad eyesight or bad lighting in their kitchens who accidentally eat green potatoes occasionally. It is statistically unlikely that every single person who encounters a green potato throws it away.
And this leads me to the question that has been bothering me for a very long time: If green potatoes are so poisonous, WHERE ARE ALL THE BODIES?
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- Badaunt
- I'm from NZ, and now live in Japan, teaching English to reluctant university students. Email me: badaunt at gmail.com
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Links for language teachers
I have noticed that I get a lot of hits from people searching "present simple" and "ESL," and assume that this is language teachers looking for ideas or lesson plans. The following links are good places to start.
ESL Lounge Here you will find lesson plans organised by level. A fantastically useful site for busy teachers, and easy to navigate.
British Council Here lesson plans are organized by topic. There are more teaching activities in the 'downloads' section.
The Internet TESL Journal
They have not updated this page for a while, but there is still a lot you might find useful.
Humanising Language Teaching
This is an online journal, good for ideas, inspiration, and especially good towards the end of semester when you're feeling not quite human.
Dave's ESL Cafe
Almost too much to wade through, but a very useful resource. Lots of links to other sources.
Karin's ESL PartyLand
This is a page specifically dealing with teaching simple present and present progressive. I have not tried any of these, but there are a lot of ideas here, and they look good. At the very least you will be inspired.
Good luck!
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10 comments:
When I come across potatoes with a lot of green, I just peel that part off and eat the rest. It never bothered me!
Potatoes go green? I always though that if you left them too long they just grew...
Maybe i need to review my food hygiene.
Good grief! Torrygirl! Have I just located one of the bodies?
(Where have you BEEN?)
Hrm. I think the reason you don't find bodies (except maybe Torrygirl's) is because the poisoning doesn't necessarily lead to death first. It first leads to sick, er, illness.
Is my theory. But what do I know. I actually think raw potatoes are tastier than cooked.
Huh. I never knew that. I don't recall ever seeing a green potato. When mine sit too long it seems like they just shrivel up and start growing roots.
Ok, I just asked my husband and he thought I was nuts for not knowing green potatos are bad. He said the green meant the potato was not ripe yet and to just cut that part off. Maybe that's why I've never seen a green potato. I don't eat potatos often, so I'm more likely to have shrivelled up root masses than fresh green poison potatoes.
The green means the potato has been exposed to light, which makes the alkaline somethingorother that's in them react and cause something horrible to happen. (Can you tell I did not listen VERY closely to the radio podcast?) Anyway, this is why in the good old days potatoes always used to be sold in sacks or paper bags. If you expose them to light, you can't store them.
These days, of course, supermarkets (or supermarket shoppers) demand that potatoes are displayed in plastic bags or in some way visibly, which means that you have to eat them quite quickly or they'll become green and poisonous and start sprouting.
When I first left home my father kindly donated a sack of potatoes to me from his crop (he grew them for a couple of years) and it lasted me a year, and even the ones that started spouting weren't green. These days I buy a packet of six potatoes and if I don't eat them all within a few days they go green, even if I keep them in the dark after buying them. It's REALLY ANNOYING.
But I think Keera must be right about the getting ill rather than dying thing - although I have to say I've never heard of anyone getting ill from green potatoes, either.
I've eaten green potatoes and not gotten sick. I never guessed there was any real problem with them.
Putting my absence down to eating a green potato might be a more interesting story than anything that really happened....
I'm accusing everybody of potato-cide. You can't just throw out potatoes just because they are jealous.
(Probably would help if you knew what they're jealous about)
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