moominmolly | (no subject)

That whole question is provoking huge guilt-spasms in me.

Oops, sorry. I should mention: this question is brought to you by me having cleaned out my fridge. (which: ew.)

Edited 2011-05-10 20:08 (UTC)

I'm not blaming you at all. Just observing. Sorry. I didn't mean to throw any guilt back.

oh, see, it is making me feel GREAT that i am not the only one with this problem!

Can eggs even go bad? I feel like they last forever in the bridge. Or possibly I eat a lot of bad eggs without realizing it.

Oh, they can, and it's epic. They last.... ALMOST forever.

I cannot recall eggs EVER going bad on me, not once in my entire life. Probably the only thing that lives in my fridge that I can say that of.

I felt pretty special. It's happened to me multiple times.

Know what never goes bad on me? CHEESE.

Ah, my cheese always goes moldy and bad. And my bread goes stale, which I think I forgot to put in my poll response. And my greens go soggy and brown. Sometimes there's nasty rotten veg juice in the drawer.

...feel better?

I hate nasty rotten veg juice! I have been on a CAMPAIGN to rid myself of nasty rotten veg juice and I think I have gotten on top of it this year, partly by no longer getting a farmshare. :)

Ditto. I now work directly across the street from a twice-weekly farmer's market, so need to only get as much green as I need and more variety than before. Can't wait for it to start.

You asked in our kitchen, but I answered this in terms of food that is mine and not my roommates'. I don't have overlapping diets with them, so we don't share much in the way of food. Their answers would be different from mine!

Edited 2011-05-10 20:16 (UTC)

i just had to trashpick the fridge at the pond house, which i last stocked pre-pneumonia, which would mean december. it was awful. and now there's kinda nothing to eat.

Greens go bad on us so often that the only way I can persuade myself to buy them is to frame it as, "I am buying an option on greens that I may or may not exercise."

Also, the only other vegetables that seem to go bad in our fridge are green beans. For some reason we always miss them before they go by. And we love green beans!

Rotting greens in the vegetable drawer is what finally convinced us that farm shares don't work for our family.

Another (non-exclusive) solution is put greens out where you see them rather than in a separate drawer.

Also? The special veggie bags really do work.

I'm sure we've had all of these things go bad at various points, but I'm -real- insistent on trying hard not to ignore things for too long, and will not-infrequently plan meals around "what needs to get used up."

Bread is most often for us but my excuse for that is that we nearly always make our own these days, which means it starts being inedible within just a few days.

I've also had soda (bottles) go flat, unopened in the pantry.

Greens, veggies, meats, and eggs get eaten as fast as they come into the house and almost never have time to spoil! Takeout leftovers usually go bad because they are in unfamiliar containers and get shoved to the back of the fridge. The worst though is half-open jars...of anything. Pasta sauce is the prime offender and it molds really disgustingly. I ticked the fruit box because for a while we were keeping the oranges and the bananas together and the bananas would ripen in a big hurry and then secretly rot the oranges underneath so that by the time we finished the bananas the oranges would be suspicious. Now that the fruits are stored apart this is much less of a problem.

Try labeling the take-out container. This works particularly well with the white Chinese take-out boxes. Doesn't work so well for me now that I've gotten much better at taking my own containers with me to the restaurant.

I've heard good things about pushing down a piece of plastic wrap right up against the surface of the pasta sauce. Haven't tried it myself, though: we tend to freeze half-jars in bags to save space.

For more scary stories and inspiration, search "Food Waste Friday." It was started by the Frugal Girl, who correctly thought that publicly posting pix of her food waste would help her not waste so much, and has spread greatly. Here's FG's food waste Friday posts (http://www.thefrugalgirl.com/category/food-waste-friday/).

For an experience to scare then inspire, check out Ready Set Simplify on the subject (http://readysetsimplify.com/category/food-waste/).

I often plan meals around what needs to be used up. Today N's lunch included the non-dried-and-wrinkly parts of a half eaten apple. Without realizing it I started meal planning as well, so now I buy produce for specific recipes in addition to produce that just looks tasty.

I don't tend to have food spoil in my fridge too often. It's just me, and what I buy, and most of what's in my fridge is awfully stable (cheese, yogurt, condiments, spicy things, eggs).

Produce I use up. Herbs I do not.

Milk (given the trips I've been on recently) has been a problem, but you didn't leave a tickybox for it!

Vegetables of all sorts go bad in my fridge with some regularity, though I think I am slowly winning the war. I've taken to experimenting with storage techniques to see if I can make things 1) last longer and 2) be more visible so I'm more likely to use them.

I've had success with putting asparagus stalks in a tall glass of water in the fridge, or broccoli heads in a the fridge in a big shallow bowl with water in the bottom. Carrots really do do better in the crisper drawer, especially wrapped in a DRY paper towel. Potatoes and onions I often leave out on the counter, though I have learned that garlic will go bad there with them.

What I simply can't keep edible is any sort of fresh head of greens. They do alright in a bowl of water on my counter, but the second I so much as think of putting them in the fridge, they wilt and get sludgy. I basically don't bother with them anymore, preferring the shame of buying salad-in-a-bag to the shame of salad-sludge-in-the-fridge.

The mysterious sauces that are leftovers from restaurants are cooking go bad as in fuzzy on top pretty often. Those that are in jars never seem to go bad, but I do get rid of them in fridge-purges on occasion. After they've sat around for YEARS, usually. Either way, they are top of my list of stuff I throw out periodically.

"Greens" is too broad. Cause my kale and collards don't go bad... But I cannot keep up with the freaking lettuce. Giant heads. Ugh.

We have a 3/4 sized fridge (oh, NYC!) and so I'm constantly pulling stuff out to make room for more stuff. Also, ever since I was diagnosed with IBS some years back, I don't keep old food around very long. I think it makes me sick :/ 5 day old leftovers gotta GO!

I never have enough food for it to even consider going bad. I dream of one day being enough of a grown-up to have that happen. Seriously, right now my fridge has (from memory) a box of baking soda, a Diet Pepsi, and some yellow curry paste. And a stick of butter. The curry paste could be bad, but I don't think it's been around that long. The freezer has a back-up stick of butter, some frozen pelmeni, and a box of baking soda. Because god forbid any of that non-existent food starts to smell.

Milk. Milk goes bad on me unless I am being really heroic about it's use, have purchased a very small container of something ultra-pasteurized, AND am feeding it to friends. Two out of three means I am only wasting a little bit. One out of three means I am wasting the milk AND the coffee I have attempted to put it in.

I mean, right now I am suspicious of everything in my fridge, but that's neither here nor there.

...also pretty much anything that goes to live at the back of a shelf.