BS: Is This Food Still Good?

Subject: RE: BS: Is This Food Still Good?
From: Donuel
Date: 25 Jul 05 - 09:55 AM

Even if it has no smell:

If it is slippery - it has a bacterial mat.
If it shimmers neon pastel colors it is bacterial.
Microscopic micelium (mold threads) may not be visible.
If it takes you beer, steals your remote and plunks down on your couch to watch TV, go ahead and eat it. It is obviously not intelligent life.

Subject: RE: BS: Is This Food Still Good?
From: JennyO
Date: 25 Jul 05 - 09:33 AM

Oh boy, have I got a song for you - heh heh!


The Office Fridge - The Shiny Bum Singers
Tune: The Red Flag (O Tannenbaum, O Christmas Tree)

The office fridge is full of slime,
No-one has cleaned it in our time,
The shelves a feast of green and grey -
And what's that lurking in the tray?

Chorus:
So raise the putrid morsel high
To throw it out, or eat and die?
Though gourmets flinch and drinkers sneer,
We'll use our fridge for more than beer.

A squelchy bag of nameless gunk,
A hardened roll falls with a clunk.
A long-lost lunch, its fate is plain,
Let mankind's loss be compost's gain.

Chorus

There is milk but no-one's keen -
Fluorescent pink and lurid green.
A blackened lump, right up the back,
Provides a salmonella snack.

Chorus

The ice amid the freezer's ooze
Is broken glass that once held booze.
A reaching hand, one finger less
The final colour in the mess.

Chorus

Subject: RE: BS: Is This Food Still Good?
From: robomatic
Date: 25 Jul 05 - 06:49 AM

From George Carlin:

Sometimes I leave stuff too long in the fridge...check this out:

Could be meat....
                  might be cake...!

When I'm worried if I'm possibly eatin' stuff gone bad, I recall that episode in the Aubrey Maturin series where the cap'n and the doctor remark to Killock that the coffee seems off. He tells him that rats broke into the coffee supply so there were a lot of rat turds mixed into the grounds. They go on to drink every drop. That's the power of coffee.

Subject: RE: BS: Is This Food Still Good?
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 25 Jul 05 - 06:42 AM

If you cannot fit them in the wok You could try Kitten Kebab or simply Curried Cat!

Why do you nedd a fridge in Alaska ? Though it was cold up there??

Subject: RE: BS: Is This Food Still Good?
From: Peace
Date: 25 Jul 05 - 01:16 AM

Lookin' better . . . .

Subject: RE: BS: Is This Food Still Good?
From: Peace
Date: 25 Jul 05 - 12:47 AM

Then there's Leo, here.

Subject: RE: BS: Is This Food Still Good?
From: Peace
Date: 25 Jul 05 - 12:44 AM

It ain't gonna help the vole problem.

Subject: RE: BS: Is This Food Still Good?
From: Peace
Date: 25 Jul 05 - 12:39 AM

Now we're gettin' somewhere.

Subject: RE: BS: Is This Food Still Good?
From: Peace
Date: 25 Jul 05 - 12:33 AM

Well, it's a start.

It will likely sweep if you use a stiff-handled stick and find some way to affix the 'furry' part to the handle. At the price, one can't complain, really.

Subject: RE: BS: Is This Food Still Good?
From: dianavan
Date: 25 Jul 05 - 12:29 AM

robomatic - have you come down yet? Are you still with us? Was it worth it?

Subject: RE: BS: Is This Food Still Good?
From: Peace
Date: 24 Jul 05 - 12:27 AM

I get a kick outta corn,
I have since the day I was born . . . .

Subject: RE: BS: Is This Food Still Good?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 23 Jul 05 - 08:47 PM

Have a great trip man!

Subject: RE: BS: Is This Food Still Good?
From: dianavan
Date: 23 Jul 05 - 08:06 PM

My daughter comes by every once in awhile to clean out the fridge because she is sure I am going to die of food poisoning :>)

...but even I wouldn't eat 19 year old masa! You are either brave or very hungry.

Don't do it? LSD is made from the fungus (ergot) that grows on corn!

Have a great trip!

Subject: RE: BS: Is This Food Still Good?
From: Jeri
Date: 23 Jul 05 - 07:22 PM

Canned anything is OK as long as the can and its seal is intact and not swollen. Canned tuna just tastes flat. Canned flounder would taste flatter.

Dry goods ought to be fine forever as long as they stayed dry. Sometimes it can smell off and you cook it and it's fine. Other times, it smells off and you open it up and find out moths have been using it. If you'll starve to death unless you can eat it, go ahead and sift it and eat. Bottom line is that if it's supposed to be dry goods and they stayed dry, it will be safe to eat. It will come down to whether it's past your tolerance for 'yuck' factor.

The things bacteria need to grow to levels high enough to make you sick are 1) time, 2) temperature, 3) food (protein) and 4) moisture. Some bacteria also require air. The only things you should be concerned about are foods with a significant amount of protien that are moist. Doesn't sound like you've got any of those, except for maybe the cat. If people send you catburgers, don't eat them. Cat jerky would probably be OK.

Subject: RE: BS: Is This Food Still Good?
From: robomatic
Date: 23 Jul 05 - 07:05 PM

I like cats. I intend to have one eventually, to help me with the vole situation around here.

If it sweeps as well, I'm interested.

Subject: RE: BS: Is This Food Still Good?
From: Peace
Date: 23 Jul 05 - 06:43 PM

I am asking people to send you cats on another thread. Should I stop?

Subject: RE: BS: Is This Food Still Good?
From: robomatic
Date: 23 Jul 05 - 06:35 PM

My wok ain't big enough for the cat.

The blue corn masa looks like it's stone ground, won't ball up for tortillas unless it's mixed with regular fine ground masa harina, then it cooks up fine.

There were some pine nuts. They were bad and I tossed 'em. I think the dried chiles will be just fine. Gonna toss most of the rest.

It's just interesting the way some stuff preserves fine while other stuff goes bad right quick.

Subject: RE: BS: Is This Food Still Good?
From: Peace
Date: 23 Jul 05 - 06:00 PM

But keep the white rice. Will go well with the cat.

Subject: RE: BS: Is This Food Still Good?
From: Peace
Date: 23 Jul 05 - 05:38 PM

On second thought, eat the cat and get new food.

Subject: RE: BS: Is This Food Still Good?
From: Peace
Date: 23 Jul 05 - 04:25 PM

Feed some to the cat first. If it's fine and healthy five hours later, you eat some too. If not, don't.

Subject: RE: BS: Is This Food Still Good?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 23 Jul 05 - 04:21 PM

I'm just jumping down to the dialog box after reading your first post and going to suggest that you dump it all and start fresh. Why put yourself through wondering "is this still good if it tastes like this?" Why eat rancid food when you can go buy fresh? Are we talking huge quantities of anything here? And even then, if you have lots and it's going to last a lot longer, it's going to be REALLY old by the time you finish. Fresh tastes best.

Even though things like white flour say they have a long shelf life, they are better when used soon after it is ground. If you're going to bother to cook, cook with fresh ingredients.

Test yourself--cook up something with that brown rice. Do you find yourself taking tentative bites, and not quite happy with it? I find if I've fixed something that I thought was a little old that I might eat some of it the first night, but I always have second thoughts and the rest is thrown out. If you can happily eat old food even if you wonder about it, you have the constitution of a goat (or my dog, who seems to be the compost gourmande) and it's a crap shoot. But me, I wouldn't fool with it. It would all go out in the compost with a bunch of dirt shoveled over the top, and run the sprinkler on it for a while. It'll be better when it comes back as next summer's tomatoes.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Is This Food Still Good?
From: robomatic
Date: 23 Jul 05 - 03:53 PM

LOL thanks gnu.
I'm gonna make tortillas with 19 year old blue corn masa today and report the results


if I can

Subject: RE: BS: Is This Food Still Good?
From: gnu
Date: 23 Jul 05 - 06:10 AM

How much $$$ could it take to replace the stuff? Chuck the works and buy new. Why take ANY chances?

Now, before anyone points out, say, the canned goods. Do you know if the cans froze at any point? Even the dry goods... how much flour is there?

Sounds like Russian Roulette to me. Got any neighbours you don't like? Have a party.

Subject: RE: BS: Is This Food Still Good?
From: GUEST,Ellen
Date: 23 Jul 05 - 05:22 AM

Most of it should be fine. The brown rice will taste terrible, though. It usually is past it's prime after 6 months.

If there aren't any bugs in the flour or white rice or tortillas they should be OK, as should any of the tinned food and the dried food.

(And all that JohninKansas said above.)

Subject: RE: BS: Is This Food Still Good?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 23 Jul 05 - 04:21 AM

The white rice and white flour shouldn't be a problem.

We buy rice in 35 to 50 pound bags, which is a 9 month to 1.5 year supply - on purpose. The 35 pound bag is the only affordable way we can get one variety we like, and the plain old white stuff is just more convenient to "get it and get it over with." We usually store in old coffee cans, since they're "free" and pretty much bug-proof. On occasion we've found a can that got missed when we resupplied and may have been 2 years old (or a little more), and it was fine.

Common white flour (the multi-purpose kind) seems to be about as durable as paper. Pastry (high gluten) and other specialty flours (often whole grain) may have enough germ/fat/oil content to taste a bit off in a shorter time, and may have "performance problems." You use them because they do something different than the common stuff, and if they get old they may not do their trick as expected - and may not taste right as well. Whole grain flours/meals in general may have enough oil/fat content to go "off," and as you noted, may smell/taste odd.

Any can that has lost its "suck" should probably be discarded, because odds are pretty good that some gas-generating bug has been growing in them. If they're still tight, they should be safe; although they deefinitely can lose some flavor.

If the smell or taste has changed, the "chemistry" has changed, and stuff old enough to be "flavor challenged" may not have the same nutritional value as the fresh product. It's claimed that "time in storage" is how dinosaurs got turned into crude oil - which isn't too nourishing.

John

Subject: BS: Is This Food Still Good?
From: robomatic
Date: 23 Jul 05 - 03:16 AM

Okay, so I got back into my home in Alaska after over nine months away.

The refrigerator had died, and I waited a few days before opening the door and blasting the insides with misted Clorox.

The canned goods seem okay, alhough the tunafish tasted flat. The canned anchovies aren't bursting, but they are no longer 'tight'. I only keep them around for pizzas anyway.

I'm curious if I'm risking my life by cooking with any of the following:
white rice: tastes okay
brown rice: smells a bit off, it's at least a year and a half old.
white flour: it's dry and doesn't smell.

pinhead oatmeal: The bag of pinhead oatmeal smells a little off, as if there are oils in there that went a bit rancid.

I discovered some food I purchased whent I drove through New Mexico in 1986:

dried chiles - I'm pretty sure they're still good.
blue corn masa - I remember looking forward to trying to make tortillas with this, but I guess I forgot about it. It doesn't smell too bad, was kept from air and bugs okay.

so my overall guesstimate is that carbohydrates store okay, the white rice and flour, but any trace of fats or proteins not canned and heat treated are degraded. The question is, is it a matter of taste only or health as well?

Winging it in Alaska.