Tufted Duck male on the duck pond at Arnot Hill, Arnold, Notts
A few years ago, having bought too much cheese at Christmas I lost some in the back of the fridge. A piece of cheddar struck up an acquaintance with the neighbouring Stilton and produced a lovely creamy blue cheddar. I thought about trying to do it again, but didn’t, as I fear I would just be disappointed. Plus, I didn’t really want to become a cheese maker.
Earlier this week, being cavalier in my attitudes to putting jars in the fridge after opening, I ended up with mould on a jar of apricot jam. The main store cupboard in the kitchen can get quite warm at times (there is a radiator on the other side of the wall behind it) and I feel this may have something to do with it, as it rarely happened at the last place where the food cupboards were up against external walls.
We were having croissants for breakfast. I order them about once a month as Julia likes them. I can take them or leave them. I remarked that there was mould on the jam and suggested she be careful about not picking it up on her knife. She, as usual, over-reacted. I, it seems, was dicing with death by eating this jam. Mould is deadly. Did I want to make myself ill? It’s an argument we have had before. Lots or websites and magazines tell you it is deadly stuff. But he evidence of my own experimentation with moulds is that they don’t do much harm.
Black Headed Gull perching on a post in the water. Who names these birds? Even in summer the head is brown, not black.
Look at Stilton and penicillin, for instance. Have they ever killed anybody?
Exactly.
So next time it happens I am going to scrape it off before she sees it (which is what I normally do) and not mention it. I’d better be careful now, in case the worst happens. What starts off as a joke in a blog looks very different in the hands of a barrister and an expert witness in R v Quercus.
Anyway, to get to the point, do you have a viewpoint on mouldy food? Mine is that I don’t want to buy it mouldy but don’t mind eating it. Apart from that black fluffy stuff. That does not look appetising.
I assume you all already have a view on uxoricide, so I won’t ask.
Fungus at Bakewell. Nice on a stump, not so good on top of your jam.
I love your description, “A piece of cheddar struck up an acquaintance with the neighbouring Stilton and produced a lovely creamy blue cheddar.”
🙂 Thank you. Sometimes it’s almost as if I am possessed by the mind of a writer, even if it is Edward Lear.
I scrape mould off the top of a newly opened jam pot if my bad storage skills have allowed it to form, but I wouldn’t scrape mould off a loaf of bread and eat the rest of the loaf. There is no science to it though.
It’s good to have standards. jam, I’m fine with – bread, I have a limit – if it gets to around quarter of an inch I get rid. We actually had crumpets go mouldy in this new cupboard and they had to go as it was unreachable. It’s very rare we get anything go mouldy even in this new cupboard but it did catch us out a few times early on.
It depends on where the mold is. If it’s on jam or fruit and it’s just a spot, I remove the mold and eat the jam or fruit. On the other hand, if it’s on bread, I throw it way. Not all mold is created equal, and bread mold is nasty. I don’t know if it will kill you, but it can wreak havoc with the digestive system.
I’ve always been told that some moulds spread much firther than you cn see, but I’ve never really evolved much of a strategy for dealing with it. Apart from the black stuff taht grows on badly manged half pots of yoghurt and staff. (That was of course in my youth, I am better organised now). 🙂
I am quick to toss moldy food. I am hawkeyed with food in fridge and in Sundays we eat whatever is leftover in fridge that has potential of going bad
I too am quick to get rid of the mouldy bits, so we share that approach. It’s all the non-mouldy bis that I object to getting rid of. 🙂
Once I see mold….ugh
🙂 Fortunately Alexander Fleming followed a different line of thought. 🙂
😉
You probably have better survival instincts than I do. Despite generations of evolution I still can’t resist tasting things to see what they are or prodding wires with my finger to see if they are live. Dry fingers, of course, I’m not a total idiot . . . 🙂
😂😂