"Here, Smell This" -- How Long Do You Keep Food in Your House?

Usually when the food smells gross and moldy. I have 4 kids before the food gets spoil they would have eaten it off already(those pigs) so, i don't have to worry about spoil food.

I don't like the way pre-shredded cheese behaves since they add cellulose to keep it from sticking, so I shred my own. We do have a lot of cheese in the freezer...along with bags of food that needs to be pitched on garbage day!

I rinse and dry meat as well - gets off any bone chips that may have stuck on, and then drying it because it gets a nicer sear that way.

Marianne at Mealmixer ( http://www.mealmixer.com )

I don't eat cheese fast enough so I have learned that most cheeses when frozen stay good for a lot longer! When you are ready to use them just take them out, put them in the fridge to defrost and there you go, queso fresco! However, cheeses with a high moisture content do NOT freeze well... I had a bad experience with that :) Right now in my fridge I have some eggs and buttermilk that I bought about a month ago.. does anyone know how to tell if they are still ok to use?

It sucked and people laughed because I had cooked dinner myself. (It was from frozen! I even checked the meat temp!)

Rest up, feel better and remember to hydrate!

Contributing Editor Sassymonkey also blogs at Sassymonkey ( http://sassymonkey.ca ) and Sassymonkey Reads ( http://sassymonkeyreads.ca ).

Guess who has food poisoning today? Me, that's who. Dinner was not leftovers and cooked thoroughly. Just goes to show, you never know...

Hey there. I actually just did a post on this because I had the same question - not about cheese, though. Although it may be a bit conservative in estimating life of foods, you may still find it helpful.
http://bit.ly/bf9kEm

Cheers!

The scene where Albert Brooks is trying to convince his mother she needs to throw away food from her fridge had me in tears. My grandmother was NOTORIOUS for scraping off icicles on the ice cream and telling us "It's FINE!"

Also George Carlin's routine about leftovers is one of my most favorite of all time. "Is it meat? Is it cake? It must be meatcake!"

Devra Renner

@ParentopiaDevra on Twitter

Contributing Editor, Family Connections

I also write at: Parentopia ( http://www.parentopia.com/blog ), Draft Day Suit ( http://www.draftdaysuit.com ),

I have a highly developed sense of smell so when something smells suspicious i don't take any chances and throw it out. My husband, however, will often disagree with me and insist that the item is still good and will eat it just in order to prove his point. Suffice it to say that never ends well

Lioness Womans Club http://www.lionesswomansclub.com

When I was a kid I got food poisoning from eating hamburger that should have been thrown out. That's made me very careful about any kind of meat product.
But food expiration dates don't necessarily mean much. With dry or canned goods they generally indicate the tail-end of peak flavor. In fact, expiration dates are not required by federal law except on infant formula and some baby foods.
My favorite example is milk. If you refrigerate it IMMEDIATELY each and every time you use it -- never letting it sit on the counter or the breakfast table -- you will easily pass the date on the carton. Pour a little in the cereal bowl or a cup and give it a sniff. If it smells weird, by all means get rid of it. But I've kept milk a couple of weeks past the sell-by date because it never sat out at room temperature for more than 10 or 15 seconds, i.e., as long as it took me to get the amount I needed.
If it's kosher to post URLs, here's an article I did on "old food" for MSN Money's Smart Spending blog:
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SmartSpending... ( http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SmartSpending... )
This explains where I'm coming from: Use common sense and don't waste food.

My husband and I are not quite aligned on the food age issue. He will cook up and eat anything that does not crawl away when you open the fridge. My mother used to store rotten food in the freezer until trash day. When we were visiting once, my husband thawed some of that food and tried to eat it. The rest of us smelled the rancid food cooking and forced him to trash it. I do think, however, his last bout of food poisening my have cured him of such behavior!

Contributing Editor Gina Carroll also blogs at Think Act: Proactive Black Parenting  ( http://www.proactiveblackparenting.blogspot.com/ )and 

I like to believe that all of those jars and bottles in the door of the fridge stay good forever. I did finally throw out some questionable olives and crystallized blackcurrant jelly recently, though.

Celeste Lindell
averagejane.blogs.com ( http://averagejane.blogs.com )

My husband works for a large farm and I was curious why he was refusing to eat the bagged lettuce. Well.....apparently even though that bagged lettuce looks fine after the expiration date there is still a significant risk of e-coli. I've always been one of those people who used it if it still looked and smelled good but apparently those days are over. Until my husband, in his infinite wisdom, shared that many veggies carry e-coli I was all for the sniff test. I just hate to be wasteful but wasting beats being deathly ill!

We try to shop for food the European way, buying just a little, 2-3 times a week. It's a bit of a hassle, but we throw our far less food when we manage frequent, small trips to the grocery store.

--

Bryony Boxer

The Baby Bunch ( http://www.babybunch.com/ )

Which is actually my BFF Aviva. She is The Queen of Fridge Facts. I'm always calling her with my deep freezer questions. She's a patient woman.

Devra Renner

@ParentopiaDevra on Twitter

Contributing Editor, Family Connections

I also write at: Parentopia ( http://www.parentopia.com/blog ), Draft Day Suit ( http://www.draftdaysuit.com ),

Yeah, speaking of food poisoning... I just got over a pretty bad bout of it. From food eaten out.

But food poisoning from our food? Doesn't happen.

Laurie in Sri Lanka

Chilli & Chocolate ( http://food.laurieashton.com ) | A Canadian in King Parakramabahu's Court ( http://srilanka.laurieashton.com ) ] Photos by LMAshton ( http://photos.lmashton.com ) |

My husband and I try our best to clean out the fridge every week on garbage night. That way, none of those "forgotten foods" sneak by in the back corner! It has to be a joint operation between you and your husband so that you don't toss something that the other person will still eat!

-Joan

At www.mylifespot.com ( http://www.mylifespot.com ),  have the good life... For yourself... For your family

Is way better, I agree. For me it is not about squeamish though -- I just hate dessicated veggies. So I tend pick up fresh stuff for a nice side dish to go with my five-day-old leftover pizza. Is that weird?

but apparently not enough to remember to bring them to work.

Mold in the shredded cheese bag is a dealbreaker for me, too. I'd probably miss some and then I'd be sorry.

I'll be all, "Where is the ..." and he'll be all, "It hit the date, I tossed it."

I would like to point out that I do not get food poisoning any more frequently than he does :)

StillTasty says so :)

I found something truly mysterious (and label-free) in the fridge a while ago. Turned out to be a pouch of Thai green curry paste. From long ago in my Thai green curry past.

I thought I had organized and cleaned my refrigerator recently enough, and then I found a really old container of almond butter yesterday. Time to clean it out again! For keeping cheese, it depends on what kind it is for me. I'll keep parmigiano rinds for months, but the cheese itself seems to be a little too dry after a month or so. I think it's fine to cut mold off of cheese and use it as long as the texture of the block is still good.

lisa from lisa is cooking

http://lisaiscooking.blogspot.com/ 
@lisaiscooking 

We definitely push the limit around here. Leftovers for 3 days, perhaps four at the most. But if there's a bit of mold on the water buffalo curd (local version of yoghurt - sort of), I'll spoon it off and keep going. We had a strawberry syrup - sugar, flavouring, not much else - that we used two years past the sell-by date. Yeah, we're pretty, uh, casual. Yup.

My mother in law tosses anything that's reached or is about to reach the sell-by date. Even for stuff that's still obviously just fine. We have very different philosophies.

Laurie in Sri Lanka

Chilli & Chocolate ( http://food.laurieashton.com ) | A Canadian in King Parakramabahu's Court ( http://srilanka.laurieashton.com ) ] Photos by LMAshton ( http://photos.lmashton.com ) |

I have a chart on my fridge which tells how long different foods last. I cut it out of the newspaper a couple years ago. I will try to find a link to something similar. Food doesn't last long though with my husband around!

-Joan

At www.mylifespot.com ( http://www.mylifespot.com ),  have the good life... For yourself... For your family

I'm probably more like your husband--fairly squeamish. I'd rather go food shopping every day than have food sit in the house for too long. And I wash chicken before I freeze each individual breast.

Melissa writes Stirrup Queens ( http://stirrup-queens.com ) and Lost and Found ( http://lostandfoundandconnectionsabound.blogspot.c... ). Her book is Navigating the Land of If ( http://thelandofif.blogspot.com/ ).

You would clean the fridge out and the goo at the bottom before your mom got here.

Retro-Food.com

I definitely use the sniff test but I'm not good with leftovers AT ALL and tend to just never eat them.

Michelle Belle picked out all of the moldy cheese from a bag of shredded cheese and then used the "non-moldy" cheese for a quesadilla today. TW and I were yelling JUST USE THE OTHER BAG... but noooo she doesn't want food to go to waste. Well good for her... but nope, not me. That bag would have been GONE.

~Denise
BlogHer Community Manager
Life. Flow. Fluctuate.