A Tofu Biological Discovery

For those who have been reading this blog for the almost seven years of its existence so far, you might know I love cooking. I rarely discuss it on here, though, except when I do. (I'm far more likely to mention it on my Quora account.)

Not every cooking adventure goes according to plan.

Today, one of my blocks of tofu looked as though someone had poked it with a yellow highlighter several times. I took a picture of it:

My first thought was, "well, this can't be good". My second thought was, "what is it? Let's find out!"

According to The Prokaryotes: Volume 4, edited by Stanley Falkow et al., it could be L. mesenteroides. This bacterium can apparently cause spoilage. Upshot: I didn't actually consume any of this tofu.

None of the Google Image Search results I came up with for any variation on "yellow spots on tofu bacteria" look anything like the picture above. Replacing "bacteria" with "spoilage" changes nothing. As far as my limited searches have yielded, my picture of afflicted tofu is unique to the internet.

I've always wanted to be the one to take a picture of something worthy of a demonstration. Like the rather beautiful red-tailed hawk in Wikipedia's hawk article, for example, but it may be my lot in blogging to contribute a picture of a soy product with a bacterial infection. The L. mesenteroides article linked above does lack a picture.

If anyone has a clearer idea of what happened to my tofu, I'm always eager to learn.