Oh wow - my rice and lentils are glowing!

Oct 10, 2026 14:00:47

Oh wow. Austin, for reasons best known to himself, shone his little UV light that he uses for setting UV sensitive resin at the inside of the empty rice-and-lentils pot. Which is cooked with turmeric, because turmeric contains curcumin which is good for dodgy knee joints.

It turns out that curcumin has other properties besides fixing knees - it also glows under UV light!

Apparently he'd been using the light for setting the resin to fix up a broken mounting on the headlamp that the wild boar smashed. But that's another story...

Oct 10, 2026 14:58:44

For equally weird reasons, I found out that dry orange lentils on the shelf glow under UV too!

Might have to go check everything, see what else glows :D I have 2 UV flashlights, tomato worms glow under it and that's the fast way to eliminate them.

Oct 10, 2026 15:13:59

Oh for goodness sake. He's going round the kitchen now.

Red lentils glow.
Yellow split chick peas glow just a teeny bit on the split side only.
Whole chick peas glow purple!
Black eyed peas glow a bit.
Turmeric glows lots.
The enamel pan glows purple.
Peanut butter glows, but not purple.
The melamine bowls that were here when we bought the place glow like crazy.

So it's not really surprising that the enamel pan I cooked red lentils and turmeric in glowed so much!

I've vetoed any more experiments because the lights going on and off so much are doing my head in now...

Oct 10, 2026 15:59:42

A silly story: When I was living in a van I got takeout from a salad bar, ate some, had the rest by my bed. It got dark, something over there was glowing in the dark!! Turn on a light, the rest of my salad. Turned it off, glowing. Turned it on, the PEAS!!! I had some peas, they must not have been very fresh, tasted ok, but apparently had some kind of bacteria on them that glowed!!
I didn't eat the rest of the peas. Ate the rest of the salad :D

Oct 10, 2026 17:38:06

Another glow in the dark story from a fungal foray that I attended on Stewart Island - the photographic record of several bioluminescent fungi

https://www.landcareresearch.co.nz/news/glowing-fungi-and-new-rust-species-among-fungal-foray-finds

One of the fellow participants on the foray wrote a piece on other bioluminescent species found in NZ

https://www.myconeer.com/p/natures-nightlights-a-journey-through

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