The one kind of food that I will not eat after the sell-by date

You all know that many foods are still "safe" to eat after the sell-by date. But there is one type of food that many experts agree that you should NOT eat after a use-by date.

That is cured, packaged meat, like cold cuts and hot dogs. The issue with these meats is listeria, a bacteria that unlike many other germs, can grow even in the cold of the refrigerator.

And this isn't just a phobic reaction on my part. Listeriosis is serious. Here's a link to foodsafety.gov with more information on this type of infection. Read for yourself, and you decide.

I did have to throw away some hot dogs, a while back, because I let them go a couple of weeks beyond the use-by date. I hated to throw them out, but it was one of those instances of better safe than sorry. If those hot dogs were just one or two days past the use-by date, it's possible that I could have just boiled the bejeebers out of them, insured a high internal temperature, and then maybe they'd have been "safe" to eat. However, these were about 2 weeks past that date, and I was taking no chances. There's a good chance that they would have tasted off by this time, anyways.


So, what do I do when I find a great deal on soon to expire hot dogs or lunch meat? I freeze these items the same day I purchase them. When I'm shopping, I have to factor in, "do I have time today to repackage this, if necessary, before freezing?" Only really an issue with large packages of meat, but I do need to think this through. Fortunately, with hot dogs, they can just be tossed in the freezer, and somewhat easily used one at a time, pried apart, even while still frozen. I just had a lapse with that package a couple of month ago.

How about you? Would you eat hot dogs or lunch meat past the use-by date? Do you think I'm just being overly cautious? Have you ever had food poisoning? Did it turn you off from eating that food ever again? I won't eat Vienna Sausages, after a very bad episode with them many years ago.

If I don't keep up with my mending pile,

then a little thing like this

becomes something more like this -- Granny Thongs

But with just a quick zig-zag stitch, doesn't even have to be a matching color thread (c'mon now, who's going to see what color thread I did my mending with, here?), I can get many more serviceable weeks out of this pair.

And that holier-than-Swiss cheese pair? I can get a little more wear out of them, too, with a zip on the sewing machine.

Not glamorous, but it'll do. ("Aw, Mom!!!!! You've got your undies on your blog today!!!")

Hope I made you laugh today! Have a great weekend.
warmly,
Lili

This week's lunch round-up: making do with less fresh produce

We're in the phase of the year when we need to make do, as much as possible, with regards to fruits and vegetables. My kids love produce, so sending them off for the day with just a sandwich and some nuts just won't cut it. It also wouldn't be terribly healthful.

I am out of carrots and oranges. These are my usual winter lunch-box staples. We're just very low on fresh produce for the time being. So, I inventoried the frozen and canned fruits and veggies in my kitchen and came up with: frozen crabapple sauce, some wrinkly fresh apples, potatoes, frozen spinach, canned pumpkin, canned tomatoes, and home-dried prunes.

For lunches this week:

• cooked the wrinkly apples and combined with some frozen crabapple sauce
• mashed potatoes with cottage cheese, garlic and spinach
• individual snack-size containers of prunes and peanuts
• veggie lasagna with pasta, canned tomatoes, garlic, cottage cheese, tofu, herbs and spinach
• pumpkin pie
• peanut butter sandwiches

When I made out my plan, I realized that I had 4 dishes to cook up with this lunch round-up. So I made my cooking do double-duty. What I prepared for lunches, became Monday's and Tuesday's dinners (or at least part of), as well.

Everything I made this week had to be completely vegetarian, as on many days, it could sit out in a heated room for several hours, so no using animal fats for sautéing vegetables, and limited egg use. And it all had to be "safe" to eat without reheating, in a pinch. The spinach lasagna may be tastier when heated, but it would still be good and "safe" if eaten cold. (I like cold pasta, myself.)

Full disclosure, here. This was a lot of scratch-cooking for me on Monday. I also had financial matters to tend to, and be out the door for my class by 4:45. So, as you can guess, my hair did not get combed, nor my face washed until 2-ish! I did shower and dress early in the day, as I'm more productive if I'm dressed and in shoes. A day when I ate standing up at the kitchen counter, had an empty bag in the middle of the kitchen floor for garbage, and many things were set on the floor, table, or chairs, as I was constantly running out of space!

Good music blaring, a plan and timetable, and I was cooking up a storm in my kitchen. Good times!


And just for fun (accounting purposes), I did a little cost estimate.

the lasagna . . . about $3 for 10 servings
the spinach-cheese potatoes . . . about  $2.25 for 10 servings
the pumpkin pie . . . about $1.35 for a whole pie (10 small servings)
the apple-crabapple sauce . . . about 15 cents for 7 servings (apples and crabapples from our mini-orchard, 15 cents for the sugar)

If any one of us ate all of this in one sitting, it would have cost $6.75, (and they'd be exploding), still a lot cheaper than one meal in the cafeteria at my daughters' university, at $9.25 for ONE meal!


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