Getting 'ugly' but healthy produce onto tables

Emeryville, California

THE eggplants are crooked and a little long-necked, contorted enough that they would probably lose in a beauty pageant against rounder or more symmetrical aubergines.

In the field where they were grown or in the supermarkets for which they were once destined, they would presumably have been discarded. Not because they are inedible - simply because they do not make the aesthetic cut.