A number of years ago, my oldest son would go to the large Farmer's Market in St. Paul, Minnesota. He would bring me all sorts of fresh produce for canning or dehydrating or freezing. One time he showed up with 100 lbs. of russet potatoes. And because at that time I wasn't all that familiar with the process of dehydrating potatoes, I canned most of them.
What I later discovered was that the top inch or so of the potatoes in the jars turned gray. They weren't rotten. They were just gray.
I'm pretty sure that nobody is fond of eating gray potatoes. I know that the persnickety members of my family would surely go "EEEWW" at the sight of them. They haven't as yet been truly hungry.
Sometimes I am tempted to relate what I saw on a program about a high school class visiting a German concentration camp. At that time, a number of years ago, the camp had lush, green lawns. A student asked the guide, who had been imprisoned at that camp, who mowed the lawn when he was there. His reply was, "Nobody mowed lawns. If we saw a blade of grass, we ate it."
Back to the potatoes. I decided to try dehydrating some of the potatoes, thus eliminating the gray pieces. So I opened several jars, drained and rinsed the pieces, spread them out on dehydrator trays, picking out the gray pieces and tossing them.
During the dehydrating process, the potato pieces took on a dark brown color that didn't go away when rehydrated. And the potato pieces did not rehydrate well enough to be useful. This experiment was a total failure.
So what will I do with the 75 lbs. of potatoes I still have in jars? Use them. Just like I have been using them. I pick out the gray pieces. Then I fry them up for a breakfast potato. Or use them in a potato salad. Or heat them and pour gravy over them. Or make mashed potatoes from them.
These days it seems prudent to use up what we have, even if we might want something else. Grocery prices, in my area anyway, continue to rise. I can not afford to waste food. Or anything else, for that matter.
I don't see things getting better any time soon. Perhaps now would be a good time to concentrate on the old ways of doing things. At least that way, we will be able to continue on while others are wondering what happened.