Oops
I dutifully packed a lunch of leftovers, and on a whim, an unopened tub of cottage cheese. Mm. Cottage cheese. I reasoned that I could eat out of the tub and provide ample warning that I had done so.Â
I sat down for a late and brief dinner at work, heating up the dregs of Saturday’s corn cheese casserole and stuffing. I didn’t quite make it to the roasted vegetables. And I sat and unthinkingly ate a good amount of cottage cheese as I read Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank.
I can’t eat without reading or otherwise engaging my brain in activity. When alone, I most often just read. Having nothing to stare at while I fork food into my mouth drives me nuts. I’d almost prefer to not eat.
So I ate the cottage cheese without much thought, and then put it away after I’d had enough.
And then I had a sinking feeling.
There had been two tubs of cottage cheese in the fridge. The one that expired on Feb. 17, and the one I just bought a couple of days ago, because I knew the cottage cheese had expired.
I looked at the expiration date, and sure enough, I’d grabbed the one that expired last week.
Yum.
For the next couple of hours, I suffered from pyschosomatic paranoia, when in truth, I wasn’t feeling all that well before I ate the cottage cheese.
The cottage cheese tasted fine. Expiration dates are often suggestions, anyway, and sometimes it also depends on the store. I just tend to follow the suggestions with dairy. I never would drink milk past its date. Besides, I buy skim milk because I’m lactose intolerant (yes, why am I eating cottage cheese? I ask myself the same question after every time I do it) and buying dairy with less fat content seems to help my digestion. Plus, I try not to drink much milk. I cook with it, and even a small amount will usually go bad before I can use all of it. In fact, it’s a good day when I can use up all the milk, usually in my famous potato soup.
Eggs … some of you may have heard my philosophy on eggs. If you haven’t, I’m not going to admit to it. But Lynette might remember what I’m talking about.
But dairy, no. Any time the milk carton bottom looks like cottage cheese… ew. Skim milk seems to do that faster, probably because it’s so watery to begin with.
And I’d like to not think about how they make cottage cheese either, thanks very much. Or cheese, my favorite thing in the world.
I’ve had brushes with bad food in the past. I drank a whole glass of chocolate milk, freshly bought from the store, and didn’t notice until the next day that it had expired the week before. I had a slow-motion noooooo…. moment when my brother went to the refrigerator for milk for one of his babies, and chose the wrong milk carton. Luckily, I caught the mistake before the baby drank any of it.
My brother asked who would keep expired food?
Well, the trouble is, when there aren’t a ton of people living there, food sometimes goes bad without noticing. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. Has nothing to do with not cleaning out my fridge. Eh hem. Has nothing to do with the fact that I forget stuff is there. Or that I think something is still fresh when it isn’t because I’m getting that old-people mentality that thinks 10 years ago wasn’t that long ago at all.
Anyway, I’m feeling fine and less paranoid. But I’m going to get rid of that cottage cheese.
Maybe.
I think it’s perfectly normal for a person to keep slightly expired food in the fridge. Fortunately, dairy products such as milk don’t have a chance to go bad in our house; we eat too much cereal. And we are all three cheese lovers, too, so cheese never goes bad.
But I could easily see a carton of cottage cheese or potato salad slowly passing its expiration date, yet not being thrown away. It’s not something you eat every day.
My little brother once reached into a bag of shredded cheese and started to eat an entire mouthful, which tasted kinda sour. He looked at the bag, and it was entirely green.
Ewwwwwwwwwwwww….
The strange thing is we have a gallon of perfectly good milk–date says so anyway–that tastes funny. All of our water in the house smells funny, too, which has me thinking that the Maumee river must be really high and mucho polluted right now to be affecting both the water and the cow milk. But I am probably just imagining things.
Todd is totally right about both the milk in our fridge and the water coming out of our faucets. That we both notice the problems is a comfort that we are not imagining things.
Dairy exceptions to your rule: yogurt and buttermilk. Yogurt even says on the label that it’s good for a certain length of time after the date (like 7 days or something), though I have a hard time eating it more than 3 days past. And buttermilk, which I use for certain baked goods mostly, though I do take a swig of it now and then, can be counted on to be good for a week or so past the date. But yogurt and buttermilk probably fall into the cheese category more than the strict dairy category given that they’re already, well, sour.
Todd and Dawn: If the milk tastes funny, there is a good chance it’s gone bad before the date. It’s happened to us before. Call the customer service number or take it back to the store. Can’t help you with the water, though.