Things You Should Have Learned But Didn't

Things You Should Have Learned But Didn't

Here's some random factoids that you could use along the way in this crazy little thing called life:

-The expiration date on your average egg carton is complete bullshit. It's at the very least two months shy of when they'll actually go kept in your fridge. Hell, when you get them from a store, they're already over a month old on their travels to your breakfast table.

In the fridge I have never had an egg go bad on me for as long as I could recall. A simple way to tell if your eggs have gone bad is to smell them once you crack them open. If you don't want to go through that hardship you could always put them in a container of cold water and see if they float. If they do, then they should be thrown out. Why is this? Well when they're bad they'll start to smell like Sulfur gas and that's just nasty smelling.

Also, while you're generally not suppose to eat mold, most bread mold is not going to kill you. It's the one that gave us penicillin. Which when you think about it, actually helps you out a little. It also helps your Brie and Camembert cheese get that nice crust going. So don't sweat it if you happen to eat some of it. Here's some USDA facts about mold on foods.

As you can tell, the biggest thing you have to worry about is death. Although, so far there's no known treatment for death's crippling effect, still everyone can acquaint themselves with the three early warning signs of death:

1. rigor mortise
2. a rotting smell
3. occasional drowsiness

Please do not drive or operate heavy machinery while dead. Death may cause complications in pregnant or nursing women. Every case of death is unique. Please consult your physician before dying.

On that related note of stench of death. If you ever get some packaged meat from trader joe's, you'd probably would have noticed the smell.. a really bad one, coming from your future meal. I'm not sure the exact science behind it, but it's due to the fact that it's grass fed. Grassfed beef smells odd if you're used to normal cows that is fed on corn and rotten gummy bears.

Or it could simply be because the air-tight packaging, which prevents the gases caused by the aging process from escaping. Other stores generally remove the beef from the cryovac and repackage it before selling it to you, there for sparing you from the initial burst of fragrance. So you probably should just only worry if your steak or other beef continues to smell like that after you've left it on the counter to come to room temperature.

Oh yeah, 100% Vegetarian fed just means that the corn at the feedlot wasn't cut with leftovers from the slaughterhouse like it was back before the mad cow scares.

Moving on, it's okay to leave your pizza out on the counter overnight. I always seem to do it since the box is always way too fucking big for the fridge no matter how you configure it.

Besides, the worse that can possibly happen is that you die. Okay, wait. perhaps that's really bad. Maybe you shouldn't eat it after all. In general there's just a couple of really important tricks to learn.

It's all good, really. Just follow these simple rules and you shouldn't die whenever faced with the question of if you should/could eat it.

Smell it. You'll know if it's gone bad.
Check the expiration date. If it is within it, you are good.
After two days, don't trust seafood. Especially mussels.
Give most leftovers a week max in the fridge.
Don't trust things you forget to fridge unless it's only an hour or two.

You also don't need to refrigerate things like Ketchup, Hot sauce, cock tail sauce and all of that other stuff that's heavily based on vinegar. The reason that you were trained to do so is that Heinz says so. They suggest you do so because the fridge door is the most opened door in your household, and they want you to see their product every time you open it. But think about it, restaurants don't keep ketchup refrigerated. Why should you?

I bet you guys wear condoms and look both ways before crossing too