Pop quiz.

Captivated by the colors I saw, I took this picture today.

i-a41ac313db1321e032672d8000704adc-Pretty.jpg

Any guesses as to what it is?

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It's cheese cloth, but the cheese making experiment was a week ago, which would mean you left it out for a week...?

It looks a lot like what I've been coughing up the last few days.

I'll be there soon for kitchen duty.

By Super Sally (not verified) on 04 May 2008 #permalink

A cloth diaper suffering the aftermath of a kid eating crayons and markers?

It looks like the dye job you'd get from peaches: pink from the skin wicking up in the juice and yellow from embedded pulp, but I can't think why they'd be in cheesecloth.

By Stephanie Z (not verified) on 04 May 2008 #permalink

It is indeed the cheesecloth used to drain the curds in last week's experiment.

Clearly, we left the cheesecloth out at room temperature for 6 days in the interests of Science -- to see what would happen. Otherwise, we could have put it right in the compost bucket.

I was kind of hoping someone would identify the microbes that are making the cheesecloth pink and yellow. (I don't know the answer myself.)

Anyone?

Is the cheesecloth emitting a particular smell?

Serratia marcesans has a reddish color to it thanks to the pigment prodigiosin. That could be the culprit for your pinkish color.

As for the yellow pigment, it could be a pseudomonad. If you put the cheesecloth under a black light, you might see some fluorescence, which would be the pigment pyoverdin and is indicative of organisms in the genus Pseudomonas.

I'm guessing that's not curd from a Guernsey or a Jersey?

By Uncle Fishy (not verified) on 05 May 2008 #permalink

Looks like the trash can after long night w/ my 1 4/5 yr old and the stomach bug (and BROTHER! was it a long night!!!)