Vegetables and mushrooms: seasonality, freshness, storage, safety, nutrition and cooking.
Wrinkled, dry garlic can still be usable even after losing quality. Wet, mushy, moldy, deeply discolored, or off-smelling cloves should be discarded, especially when several cloves in the bulb are affected.
A dry surface scar can often be trimmed. A wet, sunken, moldy, or leaking soft spot may extend into the flesh; if the tissue underneath is soft, water-soaked, or bad-smelling, discard the squash.
Sprouted seeds inside squash are a maturity phenomenon called vivipary, not automatic spoilage. If the flesh is firm and normal-smelling with no mold, wet rot, or extreme bitterness, it can still be eaten.
Wilted does not automatically mean spoiled. Limp but intact spinach can still be cooked if it has no slime, mold, wet decay, or off odor; slippery or mushy leaves belong in the trash.
Yellowing is mostly a freshness signal; slime is a spoilage signal. Dry, slightly yellow arugula can be used soon, while slippery, water-soaked, matted, or foul-smelling leaves should be tossed.
Lettuce that is slippery, water-soaked, and breaking apart is spoiled, not merely wilted. Remove a truly isolated bad outer leaf from an intact head, but toss cut lettuce when slime is widespread.
Condensation on the bag is not automatically spoilage, but slime on the leaves is. When spinach is slick, water-soaked, matted, or bad-smelling, discard the affected bag rather than rinsing it to rescue it.
Slightly flexible broccoli may just be dehydrated. Slimy or mushy broccoli, especially with a bad odor, mold, or wet decay, should be thrown away rather than rinsed or cooked to rescue it.
Dark, dry edges on cut cabbage are often surface browning and dehydration. Trim the thin layer and inspect underneath; discard cabbage that is wet, slimy, soft, moldy, or rotten-smelling.
Tiny flat black specks in otherwise crisp cabbage may be pepper spot, a quality defect. Dark areas that are wet, translucent, mushy, slimy, or bad-smelling suggest damage or decay instead.
A cabbage-like or sulfurous smell can be normal for cauliflower, especially during cooking. Toss it when the odor is clearly sour or rotten and the florets are also slimy, wet, soft, or moldy.
One small dry spot on firm broccoli can often be trimmed. If dark areas are wet, sunken, fuzzy, spreading through the florets, slimy, or bad-smelling, discard the broccoli.