Food for Thought

4 months of (mostly experimental) cooking alone/in groups has taught me these valuable lessons which I’d like to share with you.

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The Gag Test:
Anything that makes you gag is spoiled (except for leftovers from what you cooked for yourself last night).

Eggs:
When something starts pecking its way out of the shell, the egg is probably past its prime.

Dairy Products:
Milk is spoiled when it starts to look like yogurt. Yogurt is spoiled when it starts to look like cottage cheese. Cottage cheese is spoiled when it starts to look like regular cheese. Regular cheese is nothing but spoiled milk anyway and can’t get any more spoiled than it is already.

Mayonnaise:
If it makes you violently ill after you eat it, if the mayonnaise is spoiled.

Frozen Foods:
Frozen foods that have become an integral part of the defrosting problem in your freezer compartment will probably be spoiled - (or wrecked anyway) by the time you pry them out with a kitchen knife.

Expiration Dates:
This is NOT a marketing ploy to encourage you to throw away perfectly good food so that you’ll spend more on groceries. Perhaps you’d benefit by having a calendar in your kitchen.

Meat:
If opening the refrigerator door causes stray animals from a three-block radius to congregate outside your house, the meat is spoiled.

Bread:
Seseme seeds and Poppy seeds are the only officially acceptable ’spots’ that should be seen on the surface of any loaf of bread. Fuzzy and hairy looking white or green growth areas are a good indication that your bread has turned into a pharmaceutical laboratory experiment.

Canned Foods:
Any canned goods that have become the size or shape of a softball should be disposed of. Carefully.

Raisins:
Raisins should not be harder than your teeth.

Wine:
It should not taste like salad dressing.

Potatoes:
Fresh potatoes do not have roots, branches, or dense, leafy undergrowth.

Empty Containers:
Putting empty containers back into the refrigerator is an old trick, but it only works if you have a wife or a maid.

Tupperware:
Generally speaking, Tupperware containers should not fart when you open them.

General rule of thumb:
Most food cannot be kept longer than the average life span of a hamster. Keep a hamster in your refrigerator to gauge this.