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I’ve been thinking a lot this week about partnership and marriage, and especially about being married to The Fella, which is, y’know, awesome.
This Ask Metafilter comment gets to the heart of that awesomeness:
You know when you were a kid, and you’d get excited about sleepovers because you could stay up all night watching movies and talking to someone who just cracked you up and really understood you? Remember how special those nights felt?
Every day is like that now. Except we get to have really good sex, too.
Yup, that sums it up: I get to spend every day and every night with my very favorite person from now on, and we get to express that favorite-ness in every way we wish.
But I still haven’t really internalized that this is a two-way street of Awesome — that my very favorite person’s very favorite person is me.
Let me digress.
I had a rotten morning. You don’t need to know the details, but I made a small error that caused the not-sane part of my brain to castigate me and call me names (which A. is not productive and B. is NOT ALLOWED) while I flailed around trying to get dressed and out of the house in a hurry.
During this ridiculous few minutes of blistering self-loathing, The Fella kept interjecting helpful comments like, “You’re not stupid, you just made a mistake” and “How can I help?” and “Are these your pants?” When he should have been sleeping peacefully (and could very rightfully have been giving me grief over my meltdown), he was cheerfully pitching in to soothe me, to help me, to solve my problem.
And later in the day, I added some of those things together. I did the emotional math: I am married to my very favorite person, the person whose opinion I value more than anyone else’s, the person who I think is the downright AWESOMEST person in the whole wide world.
And he thinks I’m THE AWESOMEST, too.
I think he must be right. You don’t argue with the transitive property.
[update: there's a second April 2011 installment of Can I eat this? questions here, and don't forget the archives!]
It’s been a loooooong time since my last round-up of Can I eat this? questions from Ask Metafilter. Let’s dive in:
nuts and grains
- Is a green foam on steel cut oats normal?
- “Should I eat this?”-filter. Left a jar of peanut butter open on my counter and went out of town for 5 days. The house usually stays pretty cool. Safe to eat?
- Should my freshly opened bag of Hammons Black Walnuts taste like bleu cheese? I ate several, am I going to to suffer or die?
produce
- There’s a live moth living in a package of unopened, spinach. Should I cause a stink with the packing company?
- I bought a pumpkin a couple weeks before Halloween, and never did anything with it. Is it too late?
- Is my basil okay even if it’s now a different color?
- What kind of fruit or vegetable is this? And more important, can I eat it? [...] They’re growing on the fence itself. They’re orange with red fleshy seeds like pomegranates or something. So are these things edible? Is that what the skunks are eating? And, on a related note, can I eat them as well?
- SO what’s this OTHER thing growing on my backyard tree. And more important, will I soon be able to eat it?
- I use a lot of Iceberg lettuce. And I usually don’t wash it if I’m making a sandwich. [...] Am I doing a stupid thing by eating it without washing it first?
- Is my cauliflower still edible? It spent 2 nights in the trunk of the car, and probably froze and thawed twice. The cauliflower is now a rubber, water-saturated mass that stinks to high heaven. But it stills like cauliflower, just stronger – so it doesn’t exactly smell nasty.
- I roasted some butternut squash about a week ago, but haven’t yet used it. It’s been in the refrigerator the whole time. Think it’s safe to eat? How long might it last before it goes bad?
- A friend gave me some freshly picked porcini (boletus) mushrooms. Some of the bigger ones which looked fine on the outside, were almost hollow and full of bugs inside.
- I tried to microwave some asparagus and it started sparking. What is going on?
- Can I eat the grapes (?) that are growing on my building?
cheese
- When putting away our Christmas Groceries my husband overlooked putting the cheese in the fridge. A container of Parmesan shavings and two hunks of soft goat cheese were left out all night. Should we toss or keep?
- Should raw milk raclette smell like this? I bought a wedge of raw milk raclette tonight at Whole Foods. I have never tried a cheese I haven’t liked, but the internet suggests raclette has a pleasant smell, and it’s sweet/nutty/etc, whereas mine definitely has a strong sweaty sock smell.
- Someone ordered me a nice selection of Spanish cheeses for my birthday. It was shipped on Monday, according to the packing slip. It reached my office during business hours on Tuesday, but I was out that day and yesterday. The box sat there until today, when I brought it home. I opened it just now, and found 4 vacuum-packed cheeses in a little styrofoam cooler with a cold-pak — but everything was at room temperature. The box was labeled PERISHABLE. The cheeses themselves are labeled KEEP REFRIGERATED.
eggs
- Duck(?) laid an egg on my balcony. What do I do now? [...] I don’t want to leave the egg out there without it being taken care of. I don’t know enough to tell if it’s fertilized, either – if it is, can I expect that the parent duck will come back to incubate it? Will the fact that I picked it up affect anything? Can I eat it?
- Can-I-Eat-This-Filter, Thanksgiving edition. Assembled an apple pie tonight, planned to bake it tomorrow morning, but accidentally put the egg white wash on the top crust tonight. If I keep it in the fridge all night and bake it tomorrow morning, it won’t kill anyone, right?
- Raw egg white shakes from my own chickens? Would I be safe or would I be playing Russion Roulette?
- What’s the 411 on home grown eggs? A guy at work has some chickens and is sharing the bounty. Don’t laugh, I was raised entirely on hamburger helper, microwaved chicken and green beans from a can. I am just venturing out into this strange world of ‘fresh’ food.
poultry
- Why shouldn’t I eat a goose from Central Park?
- I accidentally switched the oven off part way through roasting my chicken and left it off for 30-45 minutes. Can I put the oven back on again and end up with a safe-to-eat chicken?
- Food safety-filter. Was this cooked, frozen chicken breast mishandled, or am I giving in to my own hypersensitive food safety guidelines? [...] My family thinks that because the chicken was precooked, it didn’t matter that it was left out for several hours in the heat, then placed back in the fridge, then to be cooked again tomorrow. I say that bacteria doesn’t care if chicken is raw or cooked.
meat
- We have some raw bratwursts from a local co-op. They look good but the casing looks kind of papery; the best I can describe is like thin reddish-colored newspaper; it tears like paper, but it’s on the sausages tight. Do any bratwurst experts know what this might be? Does this have to be removed, and if so, at what stage?
- Food Safety Filter (sorry): Is this stew meat safe to eat? We just bought it today. Sell by date is October 6. Meat is deeply brown-red, with areas that are brown enough to look cooked already.
- Should I eat it? Seared beef cubes, put in crock pot, forgot to plug it in … Timeline: Yesterday afternoon: seared all sides of about 20 stew beef cuts and put in small crockpot with our usual flavorings (salt, pepper, oregano, cumin). Poured boiling hot water from frying pan into crockpot to cover. Forgot to plug in crockpot. This morning: 18 hours later (probably one or two hours less), remembered. Out of curiosity I plugged it in and went to work. This evening: It smells delicious.
- Newly pregnant, ate a small bite of prosciutto. I would like to finish it. Can I?
- Is it safe to eat meat that has thawed and been in room temperature for about 6 hours, and then refrigerated again?
- Being a former vegetarian, I’m unfamiliar with cooking beef. I wanted it thawed fast and don’t have a microwave, so I put it in a sink of HOT water. THen I started reading up online, and apparently hot water is a big no-no, can cause bacterial growth…
- [This one's not a can-I-eat-it but a can-you-name-it.] Mystery Meat. My aunt gave me this meat a month ago. I can’t remember what she said it was. I vaguely remember the word “breakfast.” What kind of meat is it and how should I prepare it?
SEAFOOD!
- Can I eat it, oyster edition: I left a jar of fresh yearling oysters at room temperature while I went snowboarding. I was gone for approximately 10 hours, and when I came home the temperature in the apartment was 66°F, but it was around 70°F when I left. The jar is labeled “Perishable” and “Refrigerate”, but the sell-by date is April 17th. I plan to season and cook them in some way tomorrow and use them as the filling for a French omelette. Will I die?
- [sushi at home] can i do it without poisoning myself?
- I defrosted farmer’s market catfish in the refrigerator 48 hours ago. It’s still sitting in the fridge now. You know what’s coming, don’t you? Is it safe to eat?
- Is it safe to [eat] my ceviche yet?
canned goods, condiments, seasonings
- Will I paralyze myself and everyone I know with these pickled beans?
- Should I add more liquid to my refrigerator pickles?
- Opening a can of tomato paste, the contents spewed out. Can I eat this? I actually tossed the first little can that did this, but the second did it, too. There was no bulging of the can ends. I can’t find a decipherable expiration date anywhere. I bought them recently.
- Paranoid filter: I ate one bite of a pumpkin butter that was given to me as a Christmas gift last December. Should I fear botulism?
- Is it OK to store my spices in a shipping container for 2 weeks?
spirits and wine
- Why is my homemade walnut vodka infusion FIZZING after its first night? Am I going to die?
- Wine Question: I’ve got a bottle of 2003 Radford Dale Gravity, Stellenbosch, South Africa. Is it still “good”?
- How long does champagne last? I received a corked/boxed/sealed bottle of 1996 Dom last January, and I’ve been saving it… I just don’t know how long it’s safe to keep.
- Is our bottle of Kahlua still good? We opened it four years ago (on St. Patrick’s Day, actually) and promptly forgot about it. It’s sat on a high shelf at a fairly constant temperature. It’s about 80 percent full. It still smells OK. Wasn’t going to taste it without input from the hive.
- There are some floating solids in my small bottle of Rhum. Is it still drinkable ? I received the complimentary bottle of Rhum in early 2010 from an Air France flight.
- I bought this bottle of rum at a flea market. It says Geseco bay rum on it. and at the bottom says the Goodman Chemical Co., Bush Terminal, Brooklyn NY. Is it worth anything? Is it safe to drink? Whats the history behind it?
- I have both unopened and opened bottles of liquor. Can you tell me if these are okay to serve or does this sort of thing expire? Should I toss them out?
- unopened bottle of vodka, several years old
- unopened bottle of red wine, a couple of years old
- opened bottles of whiskey and rum and gin and others. They were opened several years ago.
sweets
- [Can-I-eat-this-filter] I left a piece of chocolate in a plastic wrapping on a place where it got too hot. The chocolate in it melted completely, the plastic did not. However, another piece of plastic, lying beneath it, started to melt. The chocolate reached maybe 60-70 degrees celsius. Are there any harmful toxins which may have migrated into the chocolate at this temperature?
- Why did all my jam “fall” to the TOP of the jar? I got some store-bought jam, used it once, then put it in the fridge. The next time I went to use it (about 2 weeks later), all the jam was moved to the top of the jar, up against the lid, as though it had been stored upside down. At the bottom of the jar was an empty gap. What caused this?
- Three christmasses gone, my wife and I bought some fudge. I’ve just found it in the back of the cupboard — can I eat it? It’s basically just sugar, that never goes off, right?
- Wedding filter: An acquaintance and her husband recently sampled their anniversary cake (the one that spends the year after the wedding in the freezer). The groom got violently ill from the cake. Is there any mythology surrounding this tradition that will allow this possible omen to be interpreted correctly?
equipment
- Marital Discord filter: After a 30+ hour power outage I open the freezer and touch the ice cubes and discover the ice cubes are still completely frozen on top with no moisture. I declare all the items in the freezer safe to eat. Is this correct?
- Does broiling empty nonstick pans kill them?
- Are unglazed quarry tiles safe for use in an oven?
- Glass bottles that were in hot water with some dilute generic store brand WD-40, so they got some residue on them. I need to make them safe and clean for flavored vodkas for human consumption. Please help!
- A mouse may probably took a shit in my well-seasoned wok. How thoroughly must I clean it?
a new pet!
- There’s a fuzzy blob in my fridge! We named her Squishy Honey. What is she?
meta
- I would like to know if other people commonly feel that food they have bought needs to be thrown out because it is somehow contaminated, or whether I’m actually too hyper about this. Often — more than once a week — I throw out food because something seems to be wrong with it.
- Several of my housemates will throw things out the moment they reach the ‘sell by’ date and it’s sort of been a running joke that I’m the one who’ll drink juice a month past it’s expiration date if it doesn’t taste bad or scrape mold off the top of jelly and eat the rest (I only did it because it was really really delicious homemade jelly). Recently, my bio-chem studying housemate took it up a notch by telling me that I’d only do something like that because I don’t understand the molecular-whatever-whatever of mold on food/ all the sightless, odorless bacteria lurking in my expired food.
Again, it’s time for a round-up of my favorite informal category of questions from the archives of Ask Metafilter. In this collection of Can I eat it? questions, the subsets are a little fuzzy. Fuzzy with mold? Well, that too.
asking for trouble?
- “I’ve got a stew that might be just a little bit too old, maybe four or five days old. It doesn’t smell funny or anything.”
- “ShouldIEatIt Filter: We both ate the same thing. He threw up, I’m fine. Is it OK to eat the leftovers?”
the outdoors is not a refrigerator
- “I have some delicious leftover Vietnamese food that has a lot of seafood in it, but no room for me to put it in my minibar. Can I keep this on my window ledge outside overnight and eat it in the morning without having to worry about spoilage?”
- “beef rib roast left out overnight at 50-60 degrees farenheit — any chance it’s still edible?”
- “I just received some delicious-looking raw-milk cheese in the mail. It was room temperature. It does not appear molded. It is shrink-wrapped.”
nor is the kitchen counter
- “Should I Eat This? Filter: cooked black beans left in a pot overnight.“
- “sometimes I make about 1.5 gallons of soup in a big pot [...] I leave it in the pot on the stove to cool. In the morning I pour it into tupperware and put it into the fridge.”
and sometimes, the refrigerator is not a refrigerator
- “I took the chicken (4 boneless, skinless breasts) from the freezer, put it into the fridge to thaw on Monday. It was still frozen by Monday’s dinner, so I figured I would cook it Tuesday. Tuesday the power went out at the house for 2 hours.” [Ed.: note that the question was posted on Thursday.]
scary dairy
- “my mother used to put a few drops of hydrogen peroxide in milk to keep it fresh past the ‘use by’ date. it appears to work. very well. what’s the chemistry behind this? and should i drink it?”
- “What sort of dairy product did I inadvertently create?”
poolish!
- “Can I keep a batch of poolish in the fridge for a few days, or do I start over?”
animal crackers
- “The good news: My beloved grandma sent me a package of the special cookies she only makes at Christmastime once every couple of years. I love these cookies. The bad news: While the package was sitting on my stoop, the squirrels ripped into the package and chewed open the plastic bag the cookies were in.”
- “Can I still eat this steak even though ants have already partaken?“
won’t somebody think of the children?
- “If I eat mussels steamed in beer am I putting my unborn baby at risk of birth defects or fetal alcohol syndrome?”
the ever-popular category of unexpectedly green foodstuffs
- “If your potatoes turn green, can you safely turn them back to brown?”
- “I adapted a peanut butter cookie recipe: included the sunflower seed butter (which has a few seeds in it), margarine, flour, baking soda, sugar, salt and one egg. When they first came out, they looked normal inside, though they were more cakey than crispy. By two hours later, any part of the cookie not exposed to air turned a deep shade of green.“
not-food is not food
- “[...] My question is, If this stuff is 100% cocoa butter, why can’t I eat it? What will happen if I do?”
- “Has anyone ever eaten those marshmallow baits that you see in bait shops? If so, how were they?”
OH HELL YES, EAT IT
- “Should I eat it? Duck fat from one week ago. [...] There is now a brick of cooked duck fat with a small layer of the meaty dripping trapped underneath.”
For the first time this year, I bring you Can I Eat This, a catalogue of almost entirely revolting, occasionally reassuring, oftentimes hilarious questions regarding food safety, from the users of Ask Metafilter. The following are quotes from actual user’s questions.
broth
- “Can I keep re-using the same cooking liquid over and over forever and ever amen?”
- “How do I tell whether beef or chicken stock/broth, that has been refrigerated, has gone yucky?”
the ever-popular poultry
- “Turkey brining fiasco – Is my turkey that has been sitting in cold tap water for the past 18 hours still good to cook?”
- “I bought a Value Pack of chicken thighs at Safeway, like the frugal shopper I am… and then promptly left them on the kitchen counter for 3 hours, like the absent-minded bumbler I am.”
- “Can I cook a chicken with the giblet bag in?“
the car is not a refrigerator
- The other day I bought a package of a popular brand of vegetarian breakfast link ‘sausage.’ I bought it in the late morning and I forgot it in the cab of my truck for about seven hours on a day that saw temperatures reach the mid-60s.”
- “I got a fully cooked ham from my employer, put it out in my car trunk during the day, and forgot about it when I got home. Over the next few days, I didn’t remember it at all.”
condiments, spices, & accoutrements
- “What’s wrong with my Szechuan peppercorns?
- “Will an infused oil I make today, still be edible come Christmas?“
- “Can mold grow on food packed in oil?“
- “How long do condiment packets last? Recently I have opened duck sauce packets that had thickened to silly putty consistency and ketchup that had turned almost black. Also, are they dangerous to eat, or just gross?“
an emergency!
- “Emergency should-I-Eat-This! Burger King Apple Fries showing discoloration.“
bugnuts
- “I found a bug in my pistachio. 
“
boozy bread
- “Did I just make alcoholic bread? Can I eat it?”
dried sausage
- “If I have a big piece of dry summer sausage that’s developed mould, do I have to throw it away?”
thermos safety
- “Is it OK to keep tea+milk in a thermos for 24 hours before drinking?”
paneer
- “There is some absolutely delicious palak paneer that I had been saving for today because I didn’t finish it at the restaurant last night. When I got home from the restaurant I put it in the refrigerator with the intention of taking it to work this morning. I took it out of the refrigerator this morning and left it in the vicinity of the front door, but I forgot about it. So the question is, can I eat it when I get home?”
suspect fish and shellfish
- “Aw crap, I left some salmon out overnight. Is it still safe to eat?” (Elsa’s note: it’s worth directing you to this response, too, if only for a rare example of justified use of the usually grating and unnecessary blink tag.)
- “Should I eat it filter: Can of Bumblebee whole baby clams. Dumped them into my chowder only to notice that they looked a bit green.”
- “Bought a bag of frozen shrimp (cooked, tails on) on Saturday night. Husband defrosted about half of it by running it under water, then changed his mind and cooked something else for dinner. Shrimp has been in the refrigerator since (in sealed tupperware). Is it still OK to eat? Will it be OK tomorrow (i.e. 3 days since defrosting)? How about Wednesday?“
- “I boiled about a half cup of quinoa with powdered vegetable broth yesterday at lunch time, then mixed in a can of tuna and two cans of salmon… Mixture was left unrefrigerated for ~20 hours… So, can I eat it?“
warm mayo
- “I bought a sandwich from a deli 14 hours ago (ham salami cheese and mayo) and left it out unrefrigerated. Can I still eat it and not get sick?”
slow cooker, slow cleaning
- “For various reasons I’d rather not go into, none of them particularly good, the ceramic cooking portion of my Crock Pot was filled with soapy water and beef stew remains, but also various muck like laundry detergent and Comet. When I poured the mixture out, there was a slimy blue residue at the bottom. I used dish soap and rather hot water to clean out the nastycrap, and soaked and washed it like three more times, and now I’ve got some water in there cooking on the high setting to try to get it to boil.”
cat litter, mmm
- “Let me be clear here: I have no intention of actually eating cat litter. But! We recently switched to the laboriously named Swheat Scoop-brand cat litter (which works quite well), which appears to be made of nothing but dried, cracked wheat.
Could I, say, cook this stuff up in some hot milk or water, add a little butter and brown sugar, and enjoy a piping hot kitty-litter breakfast? If not, why not?”
poison mushroom? no — poison ivy!
- “One of my favorites. Chicken of the woods. It has both the taste and texture of chicken. On the way home I spotted it on the side of the road. I told my wife and then after her night class, she stopped and harvested it. When she brought it in I noticed bits of poison ivy poking out of it. Mostly stems but also a few leaves and berries. I’m sure this was poison ivy.”
Once again, it’s time to visit the odd, unofficial category of questions that forms my favorite subset of the Ask Metafilter archives. Yes, it’s the “Can I eat this?” category! (Previously on macbebekin.) In this round, we see such subjects as:
cheese, a perennial favorite in Can I eat this? territory
- “[T]his particular block of Swiss cheese… has been in my fridge for 2 years. Yes, 2 years. It was a joke that’s not funny anymore. Anyways, is the cheese safe to eat? The visible discoloration is worrisome.” Mmmmm, worrisome!
- “I left my blue cheese in the fridge for a month – will eating it kill me? It’s moldy already, right?”
- “… a mozzarella block, loosely wrapped in plastic with an exposed end, a block of parmesean (same wrap situation), and a tub of fresh mozzarella in olivine. It was left out for approxamately 20 hours. Is any of it recoverable for tonight’s pizza?”
vegetables
- “…instead of tasty yellow artichoke hearts, I have thorny stuff and furry stuff.”
- “There is a small pile of garden zucchini that has been sitting on the kitchen counter for about two months, right between the sink and an always-open window (to let in the Cleveland summer). Should I eat it?”
poultry
- “Can severely freezer-burned chicken be ‘rescued’?”
- “How long can chicken be frozen and remain good (as in not dangerous) to eat?”
- “So I know you aren’t supposed to brine a butterball turkey, but I’ve already bought the turkey and all the brining stuff, what’s the worst that can happen?”
- “Has my turkey expired? Should i not deep fry this bird?”
- “Would it still be safe to make a soup today from Christmas turkey leftovers?” It boggles me how many people think suspect leftovers are rendered safe in a soup, as if boiling the hell out of spoiled meat destroys the toxins. PSA: It does not. Typically, the toxins in spoiled food are a by-product of bacteria, and not vulnerable (as bacteria is) to heat.
- Happily, the responders to this question knew that. The poster describes how he made a pot of chicken stock on Monday, then “forgot about it. Yesterday (tuesday) came and went, and it is still sitting on the stove. Today is Wednesday. If I boil it again for a bit of time, will it be ok to eat?” The overwhelming response? Oh my sweet lord, no, and one poster kindly linked to the wikipedia entry on heat-stable enterotoxins, which survive up to 100 degrees Celsius.
smelly pork
- “Bad pork or just a bad smell? Opening the bag, the pork smells horrible, sorta like rotten eggs. Rinsing it off reduced but did not eliminate the smell.”
fat
- “For how long does fatty pig skin stay good in the fridge?”
- “How long will an opened tin of goose fat last in my fridge, assuming that I cover it with cling film and treat it with the respect that it so richly deserves?”
sauces and savories
- “How does pesto go bad? Will it silently kill me?… Will I just get some gas? Hallucinations? Or should I put on my coat and start walking to the mortuary while I can still get there on my own?”
- “[T]he label on the olive salad recommended that the jars be kept refrigerated even before opening them. [But] I didn’t have a refrigerator in my hotel room for my 7 day stay in Vegas.”
- “BotulismFilter: Should I eat this? I put some sun dried tomatoes in a jar and covered them with olive oil… My friends suggested that it might be a bad idea to eat them because they’ve been sitting in a jar in my pantry for six months. I think that the olive oil makes them safe. Somehow.”
luxury foods
- “Is there anyway that I can refridgerate [this $40 appetizer of pastry-wrapped baked brie with truffled crabmeat] and re-cook it tomorrow and still have it be awesome?… Is there any chance for bacteria build up from the crab if i do try to reheat it?
sweets and snacks
- “Does anybody know the shelf life of altoids? I have a container thats probably several years old, if not older.”
- “Okay. I just finished this box of Pocky and there was this little prize in the box. I ate it. What the hell was it? … Was it incense? Candy? A bouillon cube?”
- “What is this black, salty, bug-eggy powder that I find in about 1 of 10 peanuts when I crack them open?” I’m just guessing here that a) the “black, salty, bug-eggy powder” is, y’know, bug eggs, and b) you shouldn’t eat enough to know it’s salty.
- “I just ate a few bites of trail mix before noticing that the bag was infested with weevils. WILL I DIE??”
- “What’s with the white spots on these Medjool Dates? … Being adventurous, I’ve eaten a few and they haven’t made me sick or killed me – they actually taste perfect. But I’m still curious what these dots are (and if they’ll kill me a few weeks from now).”
- “Is it safe to cook with over-ripe strawberries?”
- “I’m making raspberry preserves. I want to use half-pint jars instead of the pint jars the recipe specifies. However, I’m a little paranoid.”
eggs
- “How long will deviled eggs keep in the fridge before they go bad?”
- “I completely forgot, and left a sealed box of Egg Beaters on my counter for about 5 or so hours. Are they still safe to use?”
beans
- “Do dried lentils go bad? I have a bag of red lentils in an airtight container and they have been there for a while. What’s weird is that they are no longer red.“
- “What is going on with my beans?!”
misc. dinners
- “[The package of stuffed pasta shells with egg and prosciutto] does say on the packaging ‘Keep Refrigerated’ (before cooking, I assume) but what it DOESN’T say is, ‘If you were drunk last night and left it on the kitchen counter because you forgot to put it in the fridge, don’t eat it because it will already have spoiled even if you cook it.’“
- “Bonehead left his chinese food out… Pork fried rice. Hot and Sour soup (with beef). My kitchen is likely to hit the mid-to-high 80′s for several hours today. Has my lunch grown enough microbes to make me sick? Even after reheating?”
water
- “Should I filter my well water? [... It] leaves a blue tint in the tub and shower.”
- “omg I drank charcoal! my brita filter leaves little bits of charcoal in the filtered water. are these harmful in any way?”
- “I know the water is great in NYC, but after the city cleaned some pipes near me, the water has been coming out darker.”
- “Will using ice that melts and is then refrozen over a couple of weeks (thru a portable icemaker) make me sick?… Is there a risk of getting sick from some bacteria growth or legionnaires disease or something?”
drinks
- “I have an 8.45 ounce bottle of Sam Adams Triple Bock, ca. 1994… Safe to drink? Keep aging? Bury in a landfill?”
- “Assuming there are no signs of spoilage, is it safe to drink 10 year old grape juice that I canned myself?”
- “Is congealed milk solids the norm for glass-bottle milk?”
- “What are the metallic looking spots that float on top of my iced tea?”
- “I made a jug of iced tea from juice crystals about 2 weeks ago and it has been sitting in the fridge (uncovered, if that matters) ever since. Is it safe to drink?”
kitchen equipment
- “What has been indelibly burned into my skillet? Should I go to the emergency room now or should I save time and just start start organizing my affairs?”
- “Is it safe to clean the loose dirt off mushrooms using canned air?”
A bonus Can I eat this? question! (Okay, more accurately, it’s a What the hell did I eat? question, but let’s not quibble.) The case of the boozy backpack quinoa has lurked queasily in my mind since I read it back in February.
… [I] discover the container of food in my backpack, where it’s been sitting for a couple of days in a fairly warm environment. I chow it all down, noting that it tastes – and smells – funky. Sour, bitter, but not altogether bad. Additionally, the zucchini slices look and taste more like pickle slices.
It’s 30 minutes later now, and I swear to God I have a little bit of a buzz on.
Blarf!
Knowing that I’d missed at least one Can I eat this? question posed to AskMe, I scoured the archives… and found even more than before:
meat
- Freezer fiasco
- “Sell-Before” Sauerbraten
- highly suspect pork
- lots of suspect pork!
- Another crockpot/chicken question
- Spam from the trunk of a car
starches
- five-day-old pizza dough
- refreezing thawed hash browns and fries
- overnight rice
a nice puttanesca, perhaps?
- pasta, canned sauce, and canned fish, all past their “Best Before” dates
miscellaneous
- backpack Velveeta and cupboard Colby
- The positively Biblical-sounding honey from a fallen hive
- 13-year-old triple bock
- Why must I cook Patak’s curry paste?
really miscellaneous
- I can’t stop eating sand.
fizzy
- fizzy tomato sauce
- fizzy salad dressing
- fermented applesauce
explosive?
- Kulfi: explosive, poisonous, both, or neither?
putatively healthful
- Is this health drink harmful?
a splash of color
- Why has my garlic gone blue?
- Wait — why has my garlic turned blue?
- Okay, then, why has my garlic turned fluorescent green?
- Why is my coconut milk blue?
I am participating in NaBloPoMo.
The hive mind at Ask Metafilter draws on a pool of 60,000 members to answer questions on any topic: romantic, technical, medical, cultural. But perhaps the most entertaining discourse, second only to Steve, Don’t Eat It!, occurs in the wake of the question “Is this safe to eat?” Here I present a compilation of food safety questions from AskMe. Goggle in amazement as people take chances with:
eggs
- “How long will scrambled eggs keep?”
- “I hard-boiled a dozen eggs this morning. They’ve been sitting in the same water they boiled in which is now at room temperature (about 20C/70F) for approximately six to eight hours.“
- “The ice cream made with this maybe-undercooked custard is in the mixer right now.”
poultry
- “… today I learned that you’re very much not supposed to store raw veg & raw chicken together in the fridge overnight, and now I know better than to do it again. But…“
- “ XMAS DINNER: Is it safe to eat these leftovers?” [I would totally eat these, and very recently did eat turkey & stuffing similarly mistreated.]
- “Pizza [topped with chicken] purchased hot on Wednesday night and kept in the fridge till Friday….Good to eat?”
- “Should I eat this cooked chicken in my fridge? 6-7 days old, and in a zip-loc.”
- “I left a [chicken patty with mayo] sandwich in my car this morning, unfortunately on the back deck (sedan).”
fish and shellfish!
- “I made a tuna sandwich for lunch and left it at home [on the counter]. Will it still be edible?”
- “How long is it safe to keep cooked shrimp in a refrigerator before eating?”
- “Erm, I just ate raw swordfish… Am I gonna die?”
- “I just found some frozen scallops in the back of my refrigerator, and I imagine they have been there for about two years.”
preserved pork
- “Is it OK to eat raw pancetta? It tasted good, but it was very, very chewy, so chewy that I ended up having an unchewable lump of fat in my mouth that I had to spit out.”
the savory course
- “ How long does Chevre keep?“
- “I left my cheese out overnight. Is it still okay to eat?”
- “Mmm, walnuts. Hey, what’s that cobweb stuff?“
- “This wine’s cork has gritty brown crystal and organic matter on the bottom. What is that? Is it bad?”
taters and tomaters
- “If I remove the sprouts, are these potatoes safe to eat?“
- ” ‘Refrigerate after opening,’ says the tomato sauce. Unfortunately, it wasn’t.“
potential botulinum carriers
- “Would homemade mango chutney which was placed in a strawberry jam jar as soon as it was made and hasn’t been opened since (as far as I know) still be OK to eat after one year in a pantry cupboard at room temperature?“
- “Why did my hummus explode?” After being advised that exploding hummus may well indicate botulism, which produces no off smell or taste and can easily be deadly or debilitating, the original poster adds “It totally smells fine. I have yet to decide about eating it.”
And finally, my two favorites. One, a simple question seeking an inventive answer:
- “Can I eat a live wasp? If so, what would the safest method of eating it?”
Second, a long dramatic arc detailing the struggle between financial prudence and every other kind of prudence:
- “But hey, this is expensive crab meat.“
I am participating in NaBloPoMo.
In a recent Ask Metafilter question about undrinkably bitter lemonade, I gave a few quick tips on keeping the tart, zingy flavor from the lemon zest without extracting the pith’s bitterness, and some quick instruction on making infused simple syrup.
To my surprise, my off-the-cuff comment was added to the sidebar on the main page of MeFi.
Wow. People like lemonade.
The admins labeled my comment as “perfect lemonade recipe,” but it’s not a proper recipe with measurements and proportions, just a few hints for tarting up your favorite lemonade. Here’s the proper recipe, along with a recipe for ginger iced tea, and a few hints for cooling summer drinks:
Elli
Elsa
