The potato you love may turn on you someday. After a few days out of town, my gf and I came home to a stench in the kitchen, something like rotten cat food served in a sewer by the Angel of Death. It took a bit of sniff-sleuthing, but we soon traced it to a potato wallowing in a pool of nasty black gunk it was secreting. We thought we treated the young spud pretty well, so we were stumped as to why it turned into a sludge factory while we were gone.

 

The closest thing I've found to an explanation is from a how-to site that claims potatoes shouldn't be stored near onions, because the gases produced by each will spoil both. We did have an onion nearby, so this is plausible. But I haven't found an authoritative source that confirms this is true. Anyone know if there's real science behind the potato-onion mutually assured spoilage theory (POMAST)? /mark