Every Saturday morning, my husband makes a trip to the dump.  With the little Beach Rose in tow.  Nothing cuter than seeing her little face, all smiley, in his giant truck.  Nothing more exciting to her than going to the dump where after helping her Daddy unload all the trash and sort through the recycling she’s rewarded with a lollipop from Alan, the guy in charge of waste management.

Mama’s job is to sort through the fridge, before the dump trip, and determine what stays and what gets pitched.  And the conundrum awaits…what to get rid of and what still constitutes edible leftover food?

So……obviously….. anything that looks like a science experiment doesn’t stand a chance.  Anything fuzzy, or with dark green, black, and/or white spots on it has gotta go!

• Smell it.
• Look at it.
• Taste it.

If something’s slimy, don’t try to salvage part of it.  “If there’s slime, it’s past its prime!”  Even if only half of the onion is slimy, the onion’s flavor and texture have been compromised.

If you wouldn’t eat it yourself, don’t keep it or serve it!  If it causes your stomach to turn by looking at it, trust your gut.  If you aren’t sure when you made that chicken parm and how long cooked chicken lasts in your fridge, toss it.

“When in doubt, throw it out.”

Although I do not want to seem as though I am condoning the waste of food, I also want to make certain that you don’t end up sick from eating week and a half old leftovers, just so that you don’t feel bad throwing them away.

Yearly, about 128,000 people are hospitalized and about 3,000 die from all causes of food poisoning.

I recently bought organic chicken thighs at the grocery store.  My grocery store.  The one I love and that always provides me with the freshest, quality produce, meats, seafood, etc.  Well, everyone has a bad day…

The “best by” date was for 7 days from when I bought them.  Two days after my shopping trip, I open the package of thighs and caught a subtle whiff of……..I don’t know how to explain it……..a smell that made me feel a little weak in the knees.  I held the package up to my nose and confirmed that, sure enough, it did not smell right.

“Your nose knows.”  The chicken was not a weird color.  It wasn’t past its due date.  It wasn’t a manager’s special.  And it didn’t smell……………….. strongly, that is.  Just enough that I returned it and my grocer agreed that it was funky and doubled my money back.

Pay attention to your nose!  If you aren’t sure, do NOT use it, eat it, cook with it.