I was listening to the Ask Lifehacker podcast last week, and after I stopped laughing, I said… Hmmm, that’s pretty cool. Now let me preface that by saying that I do that a lot during that podcast. These guys are fun, and interesting, and frequently dig up things that I really can use. The lifehacker site is also awesome… But this article is less about the Ask Lifehacker podcast, and more about the solution for Adam Dachis and his predicament…
To paraphrase, Dachis was passing out frequently, often incoherent, and probably damaged his permanent memory during the past week. Sounds serious, doesn’t it? And yes, in fact it is serious, however, my dark sense of humor erupted when he said why he was not feeling well.
Dachis had been eating expired vegetables because he was too lazy to go to the grocery store, or order a grocery delivery. The problem was… It was NOT good food. They had passed from being nutritious into the wonderful world of poisonous… Hmmm, when I write this it doesn’t sound funny. I think hearing him talk about it, and Whitson Gordon reminding him several times of his poor choices are what fired my humor. It was funny… Really!
On a serious note, I tend to be very paranoid about certain foods, and more lax on others. But as pointed out by Dachis, there is a solution to guessing which foods are ok and which ones aren’t. http://www.stilltasty.com/ is a site which has a huge database of food safety rules for shelf life of food. There is also an iPhone app as well, so you can access the data from almost anywhere (Android users, you’ll have to use the web).
From opened anchovies to vodka, you can tell when to pitch it, how to store it safely, and other extremely helpful tidbits. There are also articles which discuss things like expiration dates and best by dates, unexpected things you can freeze, and foods that can be stored and kept viable forever (well, almost).
In Closing, Dachis, if you read this… I hope that you take up composting in the future instead of eating dicey vegetables!
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