I'm sure there's no way in hell this will surprise you, but I also have a...a Thing about old food.
- If I don't know how long something has been sitting in my fridge, I toss it. No matter what. No exceptions. It could look and smell fresh, and it could be something that's not particularly dangerous to eat if it's old, but if I do not know how long it's been opened, I toss it.
- If something with no listed expiration date has been sitting in my fridge for over about four days, I toss it.
- If something with a best-by date has been sitting in my fridge past the best-by date, I toss if, even though that's not a use-by date, merely a best-by date.
- If it's got beans or rice in it, I toss it with a Quickness. Both beans and rice go dangerously bad, quickly.
- If cheese gets white spots or moldy spots, oh honey, that shit is GONE. I know a lot of people just cut off the mold, but eff that in the goat ass. I do not cut mold off of food.
- If it's milk and it has even the barest hint of being sour, down the sink it goes. My husband will drink milk that's moments away from curdling, but I have a fierce sense of smell, and I always sniff milk before using it, and I can smell when it's one hour off.
- Same with bread. Before using any bread or feeding it to my young, I first sniff it. I can smell bread mold like nobody's bidness. As mentioned, I have a keen olfactory system and am particularly sensitive to that sour, moldy smell of bread that's gone off. If it smells OK, I then check every inch of every slice, looking for furry white spots. I inspect every inch of it, front and back, corner to corner, then give it a pass or fail grade. If anything seems remotely wrong, it's in the trash and mommy can't make toast that day.
PASS!!
FAIL!!
I am just basically a really, really extremely overzealous food thrower-awayer. I waste so much food it's tragic. I feel guilty about it, not to mention it's not very good for the budget, but at the same time, the last thing I want to do is ingest salsa spotty with mold or rank mayonnaise or V8 Spicy Hot past its prime or Chicken a la Staphylococcus Aureus.
As mentioned, I know that some people will take a brick of molding cheese and cut a hunk off and call it good, which I understand isn't all that uncommon, but worse yet, some will cut off the moldy hunk of bread and eat the rest, without regard to the fact that the spores have spindly, feathery, moldy, reaching fingers that spread much farther into the soft, soft, tender white flesh of bread where you cannot see yet, and this I will not stand for. I WILL NOT STAND FOR IT!
As mentioned, I know that some people will take a brick of molding cheese and cut a hunk off and call it good, which I understand isn't all that uncommon, but worse yet, some will cut off the moldy hunk of bread and eat the rest, without regard to the fact that the spores have spindly, feathery, moldy, reaching fingers that spread much farther into the soft, soft, tender white flesh of bread where you cannot see yet, and this I will not stand for. I WILL NOT STAND FOR IT!
What is terribly amusing and unexpected is that the two foods I will use quite a long time after their sell-by date are eggs and yogurt, two foods that most people would be like, "TOSS THAT SHIT LIGHTNING FAST!" Both actually last a very long time, weeks after their sell-by date, and I have no problem consuming some delicious Yoplait on October 19 if it has a sell-by date of October 1. Mmm Yoplait.
And eggs are good quite awhile past their sell-by date as well. We're talking a month or more. I am totally down with eating old eggs. But old bread? No thank you ma'am. Old juice? No way Jose Eber. Old something else? Shove it up your bum-bum.
So with only a few exceptions, basically I let so much food go to waste it's a tragedy. I'm sure most of it is still edible, but I can't deal. I can't deal with the idea that there are invisible mold spores that I might be consuming, whereas someone else might be all, "Oooh, free penicillin. Awesome."
What's your take? Are you a mold-cutter-offer? Do you eat moldy cheese or do you TOSS THAT SHIT SO FAST?
I am a horrible food waster as well. My problem is leftovers...if we don't eat leftovers the VERY NEXT NIGHT, that stuff gets tossed.
ReplyDeleteJust say no to moldy cheese!
We keep our bread fresh by keeping it in the freezer! I buy the heartier wheat bread which freezes well. Pull it out of the freezer, spread on some pb&j, by the time you cut the sandwich it is pretty well thawed out. And no worry about mold!
I am the same way about milk & bread. Cheese, however, is another story, but that's because I worked as a cheese monger & know the ins & outs of cheese freshness. After all, cheese is (as much as I hate to think about it) curdled milk. In olden times (and some artisan cheese makers today) many cheesemakers encouraged or purposely grew mold on the outside of a cheese wheel as its "rind", to help it age better & develop more flavor. Cheese hasn't actually gone bad until it develops an ammonia "tang" to it. In shredded cheese, you can usually smell it inside the bag, & that stuff gets tossed.
ReplyDeleteFor cheese, air is the enemy, so I habitually tightly rewrap blocks or wedges o' cheese, and for bagged slices, we vacuum the air back out of the bag.
I'm with you, if it's past date or even remotely suspicious, I toss. No matter what it is.
ReplyDeleteyou could write the date on each thing when you first open it. that might help you always remember how old it is.
ReplyDeletei'm a mold cutter-offer on cheddar cheese only. and if i do that, i cut off all surface area of the cheese and then put it into a fresh package so it won't get recontaminated in the old wrapper. i eat old eggs too as long as they're used in baking only. and sometimes oldish salad dressing.
everything else must be pitched if it's expired or smelling sketchy.
I agree with keeping a sharpie by the fridge and dating everything. I have started doing that with shite I put in the freezer, lest I feed my family 2 year old girl scout cookies. Which sadly, has happened.
ReplyDeleteFinally I have found our common ground (besides our amazing humor and ability to laugh at ourselves). I cannot stomach eating old food. Perish the thought. I recently found out if an egg floats it has gone bad so you can comepletely disregard the date.
My mom is one of those people who scrpaes mold off things and will eat the most vile of old food. I do agree it has something to do with how good your sense of smell is. I smell milk everytime I open it, which is 5 times a day.
I once made all my christmas cookies with old vegetable oil. I wonder how many people I poisoned that year!!!! Who knew canola went bad? not me. Meryy f'ing Christmas, here are some amazing diarrhea inducing choclate snaps.
Ches: Does the bread really thaw out by the time you're ready to eat it? Huh! I should try that...
ReplyDeleteBobbilynne: Yeah, you're right, I mean...I eat bleu cheese. Which is MOLDY CHEESE. AM I RITE? So I guess there are worse things than spots appearing on your Tillamook cheedar. But still, I can't quite bring myself to cut the mold off, even though I'll eat gorgonzola.
Sherilin and Thea: Yeah, I totally do date my foods. It's just that when I forget to, I toss it without a second thought. Or, if the sour cream is dated 12/15, and it's now 12/21, I'm all, "That's too long. TOSS!" Oh, and salad dressing is another one I throw away way too soon. I'm so afraid of my ranch going bad.
Thea: Snort. Oh boy. Bad canola. Merry f'ing Christmas indeed.
I'm totally same way. My dad used to cut the mold off cheese! so gross :(
ReplyDeleteI am a food tosser except eggs as well, I'm a little leary of yogurt but we don't have it often. Oh and I am bad about salad dressing, but stuff like ranch doesn't last long in this house so I've never had an old bottle! Nothing much sits around in time to expire with all these boys eating here. Oh and I only cut mold off cheese if there is a substantial amount left.
ReplyDeleteAriana: Oh heck yeah @ the salad dressing! Unfortunately, we never use ours up, and it sits in there, and if we ever need some again, I look at the old bottle and TOSS THAT SHIT even if it could still be good.
ReplyDeleteYup, I toss EVERYTHING except eggs. My mother is APPALLED. She saves like 1 bite of leftover XXX and then keeps it in the fridge until it dies, then she'll trim off the bad part and SERVE IT. Even then, if she has, say, a carton of strawberries that is a week old and growing mold, she'll go through and cut off all the bad parts and serve Swiss Cheese strawberries.
ReplyDeleteShe's been known to have bottled stuff in her fridge that expired OVER 5 YEARS AGO that she still uses as ingredients, and insists that "it smells ok". Yeah, she cant even smell rotten milk, so....
UGH. *shudder*