The Time I Nearly Ate a Poisonous Vegetable and Died
Yesterday I went grocery shopping.
I love to scour the produce section for interesting fruits and vegetables to try out. Well, I found this thing that was brown and waxy and looked like a long potato. And so I picked one up and said to Alice, "I am going to eat this funny vegetable."
Later that night, I took the tuber out of the grocery bag and did a little research on it. Turns out, the brown thing on my counter was called a cassava.
"Cassava is most commonly used to make make tapioca, tapioca flour, pancakes, and snack chips and ofter referred to as Yuca Root (not the non-edibel plant), Manioc, Manihot, Mandioca, and Eddoes."
Okay, sweet. Now I just had to figure out how to cook it. I figured since it was quite potato-like, I could just cut it into chunks and boil it, like you would a potato. So Little Cassava got chopped up, thrown in a pot of water, and set on the stove to boil. I went back to my laptop and read on.
"Always make sure you remove the skin and the woody center before cooking it."
Shoot. Well, it would be okay, right? I mean, Momma Froc cooks potatoes with skin on all the time. And then...
"Improper preparation of cassava can leave enough residual cyanide to cause acute cyanide intoxication and goiters, and has been linked to ataxia or partial paralysis."
Cyanide? Yeah, no thanks. I may have panicked. The cassava chunks may have been thrown out. I may or may not be ashamed. But hey, I'm still alive.
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