August 17, 2007

• My boyfriend has no nose. How does he smell rotten meat? No, he smells fine. Oh - OK. Sorry.
• Is smell going to tell you? Milk doesn't have to smell in order to be sour. I go by a strict time count. Stuff from the weekend on the following Thursday? No way.
• Eat it. If you get the sick-ups and the galloping trots, it's probably gone off. Oh, and stay away from yellow snow.
• Have to agree with the good Capt. Even if you can smell very acutely, food can go bad without giving off a bad odour. If you really want to have something for Thursday, put that food away in the freezer as soon as it's cooled down. Don't defrost it until you are going to eat it. Especially, do not freeze or chill food that has already been defrosted once. Stuff that has milk or egg in it will spoil earlier, so be extra careful with those. /naggy mom mode
• Plus, your partner's away. Surely you should be surviving on beer and pizza anyway? Them's the rules!
• Yeah, man. What gives? *goes to order keg, plastic cups*
• If you can't smell it, you don't get to eat it, No-Nose.
• I guess it is a bit too late to be telling you to stop stuffing that tape recorder up your nose?
• If it has maggots, I would carefully consider the situation before ingesting.
• At least scrape them off, run it under the tap, maybe.
• OK, first clue is going to be the length of time that it's been sitting around. Look at the amount of blood/juice it's in - if there's a lot, that means that the meat has been languishing a while, and that blood/juice is going to be full of not-so-delicious bacteria. Look then at the color of the meat itself. Fresh will have bright, vivid coloration, which will degrade over time. Look especially for the "oil-slick" rainbow smear across the meat surfaces - that's bacterial growth. Meat with a rainbowy surface isn't necessarily going to be rotten, but it's not going to be great, either. Then, look for the more obvious signs - mold patches, oddly colored spots, that sort of thing. Meat that's pushing the envelope toward rotten will often have a slick, greasy feel to it. The texture in general may feel "off" a bit. It just doesn't look or feel like good meat. And you know, the obvious: has it been refridgerated? Does it look appetizing? has it been cooked? Cooked meat has far greater staying power than raw, because all the little flora and fauna have been toasted up to heaven, so all new flora and fauna have to move in and start munching and reproducing. Beef stays longer than pork, which stays longer than chicken, which stays longer than fish, which stays longer than shellfish. And sometimes it's just wise to knock on a neighbor's door and say, does this smell bad to you? Lastly: when in doubt, throw it out. Food poisoning - REAL food poisoning, not just a touch of the stomach flu - is a serious sort of gastrointestinal event, and not even remotely for the squeamish. You think your last case of the verps was bad, just imagine cranking that up an order of magnitude and adding every orifice/potential orifice you've got to the festival. Then double it. Then add the possibility of hospitalization. That's food poisoning. The prospective delights of dubious leftovers are not worth it.
• I have a friend who was born without a sense of smell. I can ask him for you, but he's never lived alone, so I'm not sure that he's ever had to confront this either.
• Fes: I take it you've never had fully hung pheasant or venison? My grandfather didn't believe a bird was fully hung unless it began to "slip"--your second two paragraphs describe his ideal bird. *shudders But, back to our original question. Fes nailed it on the raw stuff, but cooked...is cooked. If your SO cooked a dish with meat in it and IMMEDIATELY cooled it down and froze or refrigerated it in a less than F40 degrees with a tight cover on the container, and nobody at your house stands in front of the fridge with the door open for 10 minutes at a time, then you will probably be OK to eat it by Thursday. Microwave it till it's HOT clear through. I wouldn't save anything with mayonnaise, a cream sauce or milk added, or something that has been reheated twice, but we cook a big pot of sketti sauce with hamburger on Saturday, then we eat sketti Saturday, then again Monday night, and might have the last of it on Thursday with macaroni and shredded cheese on top. IMO acid stuff--with tomatoes, fer instance, keeps much longer.
• Since Fes pretty much has you covered, I'd just was wondering (and for meredithea's friend), if you've ever considered going into the Crime Scene Cleanup field. I know it's macabre, but you could seriously stand to make a large chunk of change. A guy I know runs a company like this (turnaround for non smell challenged people is usually 1-2 months), and while it's visually unappealing as well, most ex employees quit because of the stench. He has no sense of smell, which is why he got into the field. It's pretty gross, but he does drive a Porsche and have a sailboat...
• ...I take it you've never had fully hung pheasant or venison?... Do I have to come out of hiding to reply to this? Please, someone, don't let this go unanswered.
• Now, zis afternoon, we have monsieur's favourite: ze jugged hare. Ze hare is very high, and ze sauce is very rich with truffles, anchovies, Grand Marnier, bacon, and cream.
• This is why everyone should have their own royal food taster.
• Does you buddy by any chance know someone called Dexter, Debaser?
• Holy shit, thanks for reminding me to mininova season 2 of that! Though I thought season 1 ended pretty conclusively and I don't really see how they can beat that story.
• I take it you've never had fully hung pheasant or venison? *raises one eyebrow* I've eaten both, but if by "fully hung" you mean "getting a little ripe tied to that beam in the garage"? Then no. When I hunted, I'd let my deer hang a couple days, max, then off to the cutter. Never successfully shot a pheasant.
• Never successfully shot a pheasant. Good thing too. I hear that gets them to revolt and the like.
• You could always throw a bit of it under the microscope.
• 1. Is there stuff wriggling in it? Yes: go to step 2. No: go straight to step 3 2. Clean out the wriggly stuff. 3. Enjoy the gamey flavour!
• Help is on the way.
• Also no food, cooked or raw, should be left out more than 2 hours, according to a friend who's a cooperative extension nutrition teacher.
• Fully hung: In earlier times, birds would be hung by their heads until the body fell off, at which point they would be ready for cooking. one site: Most Game is best after hanging - that is leaving or hanging in cool conditions before plucking or skinning. This should be for a minimum two days to a maximum of three weeks in winter. I would tend to settle on seven days provided the weather is not hot. Game tends to be tougher than other meat or poultry as the animals were wild and muscles were used more in the process of survival. Hanging will help tenderise the meat and develop a characteristic gamey flavour. This is caused by enzymic and bacterial action. The longer you hang it the stronger the flavour. We always hung deer two weeks. I don't do wild birds. Had enough of that when I was young, thenkew. Not much meat, too much shot, too gamey. Give me a free-range chicken slowly strangled any day.
• Technology is your friend
• I think Dreadnought's question concerns meat that has already been cooked. I vote for "putting stuff in the freezer as soon as it's cooled". If there's no space in the freezer, I'd say food cooked on Sunday can be eaten as late as Wednesday night if it's been covered and refrigerated and you reheat it to a very high temperature.
• Or you could follow the handy visual cues available on this website.
• Technology, Argh? pffftt You need a best friend! How about a TWO-NOSED DOG?* *I can't believe nobody else suggested this.! HA! Trumped you, suckers
• Thanks, everybody, for your answers. Yes, I've had a 'well hung' pheasant. Actually, now that I think of it, it was a well hung cock pheasant. Beautiful plumage. Earlier this year, a pheasant few into the window of a friend of mine. We hung it for a week and it was most delicious. But, in the case of the pheasant we cooked it very thoroughly (and shook out the maggots!). I'm assuming this would kill all the nasties. With re-heating meat I'm assuming it would keep for less long, because you don't want to cook it as hot or it will dry out. Unfortunately, we have neither a microwave or a freezer (we live in a tiny, tiny flat). Having said that, jb just came home last night, and pronounced the roast duck remains in the fridge 'still good' after a week. I'm wondering if there are just fewer buggies around in a cool climate like England than, say, Singapore. A while ago, I was talking about carrying a water bottle to some friends of mine. In Toronto, this is something that everybody does all summer, but the English people thought it was just nuts. But the South African and Greeks present thought it wasn't just nuts, but verging on suicidal. As far as they were concerned, you should never reuse a water bottle unless you practically sterilise it first. So do things just get poisonous more quickly in hot climates?
• Not really. I used the exact same water bottle which has been consistently sitting directly in 40-45 C desert sun for seven weeks straight without washing it. Mind you, I am not a biologist, but heat accelerates the decomposition process for organic matter by lending energy and, by that, growth to bacterial activity; however, the notion that your own saliva or airborne bacteria hermetically trapped in a used bottle can poison your water within any small amount of time of reuse is both hilarious and sad. You would likely already be poisoned by either before even taking a sip from that bottle. Sounds like the unchallenged reiteration of consumer fear-monger earworms. Although the majority of bacteria like hot, humid environments, because you have that environment in a sun beaten water bottle doesn't mean that you have bacteria. Of course, I have no idea what their argument is for why you would not want to drink water from the same bottle more than once, but I'm going to go pour some tap water into my never cleaned, year-old polaris bottle for the seven hundredth time and continue to live despite the cries of "bacteria," "naphthalene," or "PET chems."
• Well, to be fair to the nay-sayers from hot countries, both the South African and the Greek were microbiologists.
• Well, to be fair to the nay-sayers from hot countries, both the South African and the Greek were microbiologists.
• oops, sorry
• My feeling is that things don't get as nasty in the hot dry Idaho desert as they did in hot, humid Turkey or where my sister lives in Florida. I also mind germs garnered from working behind cattle or going to an endurance ride much less than the ones I pick up when I substitute teach or hang around all day in Boise. (and I even wash my hands before I eat when I'm in a 'civilized' environment, instead of *might* rinsing them in the horse trough.) I know kids who fairly often have runny noses and and minor infected splinters, never get neosporin for a skinned knee, and are grungy from playing out, but they're never really sick. I know kids that are always neat, clean, and polite, get their Bactine for a boo-boo, and their mom's have OCD about housekeeping, and these kids get SICK--as in hospital sick. There's even articles that suggest kids that pick their noses develop a stronger immune system. (as well as enhancing my gag reflex) As far as your microbiologists... When you work all day with bugs you can't see, and you KNOW that bugs you can't see are everywhere, and you know some of the bugs you can't see are bound to be the horrible mutant killer bugs you work with and see all the time, it skews your thinking a bit. People who don't know about germ theory don't bother to wash their hands much. People who do, wash their hands after using the bathroom, before they eat, or when they get dirty. People who know too much about germ theory KNOW the little buggers are out to get us. IC: Hopefully, the germs you carry in your bottle are yours, and most likely, you're living in a comfortable symbiotic relationship. If it were my bottle, I'd wash it out at least during the period, and after, I was sick with something, just to make sure there's none of the bad germs floating around. But just rinsing and leaving the bottle to dry kills tons of germs. Most don't live on a dry, non-organic surface. With re-heating meat I'm assuming it would keep for less long, because you don't want to cook it as hot or it will dry out. Actually, you can re-heat meat dishes without drying them out if you just add a bit of water, cover, and heat throughly, but slowly, on a low burner. I normally don't use my stove in the summer, but hardly ever use the micronuker in the winter, that's why I didn't mention the stove. Germs is one thing, how about those countries where they won't drink their Pepsi or Coke cold because it could cause everything from cramps to death to loss of virility? (I was told that, didn't make it up.) Even the old cowboys here in Idaho won't drink iced water if they're working outside all day. They say it just makes you more thirsty, and it will give you stomach cramps. They just don't drink at all, unless conditions are extreme, and then, moderately. And cowboys don't get germs.
• Ooh, good tip! Thanks!
• About the re-heating with water, I mean.
• This is ages late, but when I lived in FL I couldn't drink chilled water in hot weather and seldom drank it in more temperate weather. It gave me "ice cream headache" and, yes, made me more thirsty. Room temp was the way to go. (I could drink other chilled beverages no prob, though.) Now that I don't live in such a hot climate anymore, I drink ice water all the time.