No, wait! It's still good!

How to salvage questionable food, When to throw it away, and How to tell the difference.

This blog is nothing if not about humility.
Let's admit it: we've all been there.  You're hungry, you go to grab the cheese to make a sammich, and there's a greenish patch on the corner. You think back to biology class and how you learned that fungal hyphae burrow deep into their substrate and the fuzzy part on the surface is just the tip of the iceberg. And then you grab a knife, you slice off the fuzzy parts, and you make your sandwich. With extra mustard, because as we all know spicy condiments kill bacteria and mold*.

Food thrown away is money thrown away. And we don't always get to everything in the refrigerator before it starts to go. So here's a quick and dirty way to know if what you're thinking about eating is good to go or needs to get gone, and how to make it still taste okay even if it's no longer pretty.

Moldy or Overripe Strawberries (and other fruits and veggies, too)
Strawberries are often affected by Rhizopus fungus that causes them to go fuzzy and gross. The first indications of berries gone awry are bruised spots on the fruit, followed by a greyish fuzz on the soft areas of the fruit.
Any visibly moldy berries should be tossed, as the fungus has penetrated the entire berry and may be producing toxins. Berries with bruising are still safe, though. Mix up a solution of one part vinegar to three parts water and soak your fruit for at least thirty seconds before rinsing thoroughly with cool water. Cut off the soft spots before you eat the berries.

Moldy Bread
Bread is also the victim of Rhizopus fungus, as well as a host of other fungi that are toxic. If only one or two slices on the end are moldy, it's probably still safe to eat the rest. Transfer the unaffected bread to a clean, dry bag for continued storage. Toss the unaffected slices closest to the mold, too, just in case. One trick is to touch and sniff the unaffected slices. If they're dry and smell bready, you're good. If they're damp or smell at all musty, then toss 'em. The mold is probably present. If you think your bread's okay but you're still a bit wary, toast it before eating. Heat will kill any surface-dwelling unwanted presences.

Stale Chips and Snacks
Processed snacks are expensive and it's always heartbreaking when a treat gets left open and goes stale. But you can revive your spendy munchies by putting them in a single layer on a baking sheet and putting them into a 400˚ oven for a minute or two. Keep an eye on them and take them out before they get brown.

Stale Bread and Other Pastries
Rock-hard bread still has a valued place in my heart. I'll douse it with olive oil and vinegar for bread salad with tomatoes and olives and a little mozzarella. Or pop it into a bowl of soup as a super-sized crouton. Or hack it into reasonable-sized hunks and soak it with broth and herbs for stuffing.
Sweeter pastries can survive getting stale, too, as long as they're not moldy. Hard pastries like cakes, doughnuts, or croissants can get torn up and mixed with egg and milk for ugly but tasty bread-and-butter pudding, or you could whip together a strata. I've also revived cake by dousing it with my homemade baklava honey syrup.

Milk Past Expiration Date
It's tricky with milk. Depending on your refrigerator temperature, the milk-to-air ratio in your carton, and sources of contamination, milk can spoil well before the sell-by date or as much as a month after. I personally perceive milk as "spoiled" way before most people, so i generally don't buy the stuff unless i'm going to use it right away. I also keep my fridge at or near the coldest setting to keep foods longer. If your milk smells okay, go ahead and use it. If it's getting questionable, but not yet spoiled, you can keep it a little bit longer for use in cooking by turning it into pseudo-buttermilk. Just add one tablespoon of vinegar (apple cider or white) to each scant cup of milk. Let it sit for about five minutes and stir before using. You'll get another few days to use it up this way.

Eggs Past Sell-By Date
The expiration date on eggs is somewhat misleading.  If kept in a 45˚ F environment, eggs may be good for up to a month past their sell-by date. If you're not sure about them, crack each egg one at a time into a separate bowl for examination before adding them to your recipe. The yolk should be bright yellow or orangey, never greenish, and should have a firm-looking membrane around it unless you accidentally broke it while cracking the egg. The white should be slightly thick and goopy. If it's runny or watery, your egg is probably too far gone to use. Be sure to wash your hands thoroughly after touching raw eggs. No need to risk salmonella!

Moldy Cheese
If it's a hard cheese, like cheddar or jack, just cut off the mold. Take off a minimum of a half inch and as much as a whole inch, and for goodness' sake keep your knife out of the moldy areas!
If your cheese is soft, though, like a brie or goat cheese, then it's gone. Throw it out. Cry a little bit inside. Say a few words over the trash bin and next time you go to the grocery think fondly of the cheese that could have been.

Mold on leftovers, meats, or canned or jarred items is a death knell. Consider these a loss.

Remember that food is only worth the money you've paid if you actually get to enjoy it. Don't save your favorite perishables for an uncertain future. Eat them, or share them with a friend.
I'll update this entry over time with links to recipes that incorporate revived food, too. So stay tuned.

*Not an actual true fact. Do not attempt.

Smoking the Cheddar, part Two

This morning i managed to successfully smoke some cheese. I broke some rules. I made some stuff up as i went along. I learned what works and what does not, so now i can confidently make a proper blog to share the technique.

Smoked cheese at my local grocery costs about $1.50 per ounce. I managed to make a fresh, delicious, easily-customizable version for about $.75 per ounce, or about half price. I could have done even better had i used less expensive cheese, but my boyfriend was paying and he let me splurge on the raw milk organically-raised vegetable rennet cheese, because he loves me.

Here are our players:

• Sharp White Cheddar and Mozzarella cheeses, both melted and misshapen from my failed attempt last night

• Fine sea salt (coarse would have been better)

• Cherry wood chips

• Old pie tin, cookie sheet, and wire cooling rack

• That can of olives i mentioned in the last blog 

• Grill, charcoal bits (outdoors, not pictured) 

 First, grab your wood chips and put a couple of handfuls into a bowl. cover them with water and let them soak while you get everything ready, or at least half an hour before you start smoking. I used about a third of the bag, but a quarter of the bag is probably more realistic. I had a lot of chips left over.

Next, pour some of the salt in a thin layer into the pie pan, and arrange your cheeses on the wire rack.

Get your charcoal ready, and have some tongs on hand. You will realistically need 4-5 briquettes or, if you are very lucky and your neighbor lets you use his fancy pants all natural charcoal, about 4-5 medium/smallish chunks.
If you are like me and not grill-competent, then "getting the charcoal ready" means lighting it on fire in the grill and when it is glowing red and very hot, you're good to go.

While your charcoal is heating up, remember that can of olives? It's time for the can of olives.

It doesn't have to be a can of olives, really. It could be a can of anything. I had olives, so that's the can i used. You could have beans, or corn, or soup. Whatever. Make it a can of something you're about to eat.
Open the can and eat the contents. Or i guess you could put them in a bowl or something for later. It's up to you. I'm not here to judge. Do with the contents of your can whatever feels right.
Now rinse the can and grab a hammer and a nail and bash some holes in the can. You'll want holes in the bottom and a few holes in the sides, near the bottom. I didn't take pictures of this part because i forgot.
Sorry, i'm new at this. Use your imagination.


After your can has a suitable number of holes, put some of your now ready charcoal into it with tongs. Put the can on the grill first, then charcoal into the can. If you do it the other way around, your hand will get burnt. And that will hurt. A lot. Trust me on this.

here is my can with hot charcoal.

 Then add a handful of your damp wood chips to the top of the can. It will start smoking pretty soon.

here is my can with wood chips and smoke.

While that's getting going, arrange your pans with cheese and salt in the grill. Put them as far away from the heat source as possible. We're trying to build a very smoky, very cool environment. Heat means melted cheese and a sad you.

What's that square box, you ask? Why that is the smoker box that i attempted to use last night and it failed miserably. So today i just put some coals into it and dumped wood chips on top.

Now just close the lid of your grill and go do something else for a bit. Check on the progress of your smoked foodstuffs every twenty minutes or so. Add more soaked wood chips as needed and give your smoker can a little shake to keep the air holes clear so that the tiny fire keeps burning and making smoke. If you're afraid that it might be getting kinda warm for your cheese, you can pack it in ice. The ice will melt into the pan below the cheese so it won't get soggy, and you can dump it out as needed.

See? Ice!

After about an hour and a half, this is what my cheese looked like:

Notice that the salt is also pretty tanned. It's got a delicious smokey flavor that i look forward to putting on popcorn and in chili.

Keep smoking for anywhere between half an hour and four hours or more, depending on how smokey you like it. I found that two hours with cherry wood was perfect for me. Other woods, different cheeses, and temperature variances will give different results. Experiment until you get it just the way you like it!

Here's some closeups of that cheese:

NOM

OM NOM NOM

Now the cheese needs to rest. It's had a rough day and it's likely to be a little harsh if you try to eat it right away. Put it in separate ziplock baggies or wrap it in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge for at least a few days so that the flavor can mellow.

Your salt can be transferred to your favorite salt receptacle and used to season your favorite salty things. Everything will taste like it was cooked outdoors!

 

The total cost of this food adventure, not counting the charcoal that my neighbor gave me in exchange for a small share of the haul, was less than $20 total. It yielded 20oz of fancity smoked cheese and as much fancity smoked salt as i felt like making, which in this case was a quarter cup. I used $2 worth of wood chips, $13 for cheese (you could go a LOT cheaper than i did and still get excellent results) and a few cents worth of salt. I also have enough wood chips to smoke two more batches of cheese.

Overall, a great success! So get out there and start smoking!

Smoking the Cheddar, part One

If i have one guilty pleasure, it is cheese.
In truth, i have tons of guilty pleasures... but among them cheese is pretty prominent. Cheese is one of the things i will splurge on if i have the opportunity. And with summer here, there is nothing better than a smoked cheddar and apple grilled cheese sandwich for a quick and easy lunch or dinner. Unfortunately, smoked cheeses are considerably more expensive than standard cheeses. I was at the grocery store yesterday and looking at cheeses, as i always do, and noticed that the smoked cheddar was like $12 for 8oz, which is pretty pricey. I've been wanting to try my hand at smoking cheeses and salts for a while now. My boyfriend gave me a smoker box as a gift because i'd talked about it so much. I had yesterday and today off, so why not give it a go?

I purchased:

• Sharp White Cheddar - $7 for 12oz

• Mozzarella - $6 for 8oz

• Bag of cherry wood chips - $4.50 for 3lbs

I already had on hand:

• Finely ground sea salt. I would have preferred coarse ground but a large part of this blog is making do with what is currently available. So fine salt it is.

• Smoker box

• Can of olives (we'll discuss this later)

• Old pie tin

• Old cookie sheet

• Wire cooling rack

• Grill with lid

• Charcoal (fancy all-natural charcoal, even!) 

Last night, i followed the directions on the smoker box. I lit one side of the grill and let it get good and hot. I soaked my wood chips for half an hour and then put them in the box and put the box onto the lit side of the grill. I placed the cheese on the cooling rack over a clean cookie sheet, and placed it far away enough from the fire to keep it from melting and crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.
An hour later, the smoker box had not yet even begun to smoke. The Mozzarella was a melty, greasy mess that had started dripping through the wire rack and made a cheesy puddle on the cooking sheet. Too much heat had built up around inside the grill, and the smoker box was too far away from the heat source to be effective.
I stood there and looked at my $18 mistake for a moment. $18 for a poor kid is a huge sum. That's 3 pairs of Goodwill jeans, or enough gas to get me between school and work for a month, or a whole bag of groceries.
So i did what any smart poor kid does: i scooped up the melted cheese off of the cookie sheet, put it in a plastic ziplock bag, and put it in the fridge to cool. I also removed the semi-solid Cheddar from the rack to cool, and i set the smoker box full of wood chips aside while i planned my next attack.

Mistakes are a good thing. When we meet resistance, we shape ourselves. So i didn't let this mistake keep me from my goal of delicious foodstuffs. I took a break and started fresh this morning with greater wisdom and a fresh perspective.

Obligatory Introduction

Hi! I'm Miss Rabbit, a vegetarian poor kid who eats like a rich kid.
I'm a college student who was raised poor and did okay. Now with the economic downturn i find myself back in a low-paying job struggling to keep my head above water while i get an education and maintain a household.
It's okay, though. I've been poor a long time and i'm proud to say i'm pretty good at it!

Most of these blogs will be vegetarian, but i will occasionally bust out some vegan and omnivore recipes, too. Thanks for reading and i hope you enjoy the ride!