Mmmmmmould

We were trying to find out exactly what kind of mould was growing in our kitchen. George had left another of his unique rice pans lying in an undiscovered spot, and it had gone almost.... pretty. George has a talent for creating a thick, gluelike layer of starch in his rice pans and, as you can see, the different moulds love it. We've got pink jelly beans, fluffy green hillocks and a delicate yellow slime. We figured out that the pink is most likely Serratia marcescens, and I think we've got some Fusarium families (green) and quite possibly a rather pleasant case of Aspergillus Flavus (yellow). A.Flavus comes with a nasty toxin that can cause hepatitis, brain necrosis and cancers! Hurray! On the other hand, had we kept it and avoided all the nasty toxins, a nice side effect of mouldy rice is... Sake! Sadly though, you need koji mould, which doesn't appear to be present in this case.

I happened to stumble across a rather amusing website when trying to find out what sort of moulds they were that George had left growing in his rice pan. Here's some extracts for you, and the full link:

http://www.ucc.asn.au/~alastair/biohazard/

"6-Apr-2000: Isn't it funny how milk doesn't smell much different when it first goes off, but when you try to pour it onto your cereal it's more like cheese with salad dressing?.... 9-Jun-2000: I have discovered that stale & mouldy rye bread bounces well. 11-Jun-2000: The rye bread doesn't bounce too good any more. So I threw it out."