Refrigerator Recommendations
June 25th, 2008 by Jonathan
When people ask me how they can reduce their personal food waste, I often point them to five basic tips.
But this recent piece in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette provides more specific advice on how best to use your fridge and handle food. For instance, this pointer:
Expiration dates are most often “sell by” or “best by” dates rather than “don’t use after” dates. They ensure quality rather than safety, partly because when food goes bad it often has a lot more to do with how it’s handled once you take it home and when you open the package…
Or this bit on mold:
If the mold is black, throw it out. If it’s blue, green or white, cut (or scoop) it out down to about an inch away from the moldy area.
Most interesting to me were the refrigerator tips. Of course, as dedicated readers know, Wasted Food can offer more specific cheese storage advice.
Here are three things I learned from this article:
1. Use older eggs for baking, not breakfast (eating them plain)
2. Butter absorbs flavors easily, so keep it separate from other foods
3. We store condiments in the fridge door for good reason, but shouldn’t keep milk there.
What did you take from the article? If you have wisdom to impart on avoiding waste please share it with us on the Tips page. Or if you write a blog post on the topic, I’d love to pass it along.
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All great tips, especially planning ahead and sticking to the list, and shopping how you REALLY eat, not how you would LIKE to eat.
And I love the picture of the kitty in the fridge!
Good article! That’s nice to know about the mold.
Regarding the seafood, I wonder if the “use within a day” guideline is for raw or cooked seafood. I made hibachi style chicken and shrimp last Friday and I ate leftovers for lunch yesterday with no unpleasant results.
I did have a few bones to pick and would say that the guidelines are a bit conservative…egg salad only lasts one day? If it’s going bad that quickly, wouldn’t it make sense to store it on the bottom (coldest) shelf?
In general, though, these are guidelines meant to address a range of variables. This is one of the most important parts of the piece: “Still, when it comes to quality, use your eyes and nose.”
And it’s not like anyone is going to write that it’s OK to eat egg salad five days later. But many of you have done that and suffered no ill effects.
i agree w the egg tip- i have been doing that except i thought i was just being thrifty or creative. thanks for sharing this! also i have to tell you in my family we are really trying to get thru everything in the pantry and fridge before it goes bad- all thanks to you!
You go, mommy the robot! I’m doing the robot (dance) in your honor.
So, why should we not keep milk in the fridge door? This is a new one for me…
Blessings.
The door is usually the warmest part of the fridge, because of all the times you open it. Since you want milk to be pretty cold…
That’s what they say, anyway, and it sounds right to me.
What do you think of vacuum sealers for food storage? worth the investment or a gimmick?
Vacuum sealers work pretty well, on the whole. They’ll extend the life of your food. I have tried the Frisper Freshkeeper and was reasonably pleased.
I think of using a vacuum sealer as providing a really good way to close a bag of chips. Whether it’s worth buying, depends on your habits. How much of your food tends to sit too long before you eat it? Also, they seem like they’re best with meats and seafood.
Here’s a whole book on the topic with cover art reminiscent of, but not of, the “…For Dummies” series:
http://www.vacuumsealerguide.com/
The habit I’m really having to learn for food storage is labels. Dates aren’t so bad, I trust my sense of smell, but labels on reused containers (and using only clear containers for things like melons) are a place we really fall down.
This weekend my boyfriend ate a salad with chocolate sauce poured over it, because I put the homemade chocolate sauce in a salad dressing bottle and didn’t change the label. I would have dumped it and made another bowl of salad–I’m not *that* frugal. And I know we lost half a cantelope this week because it was in a cottage cheese container and I didn’t notice it was there.
My best trick is to turn containers upside down in the fridge (assuming you trust they won’t leak). A lot of tupperware containers have a clear bottom but an opaque top. This is even more true of the plastic containers you get from the deli counter, for example. We keep them upside down so you can really see the contents when you open the fridge, which helps remind us to eat up and not waste.
Great blog, Jonathan!