Noble Rot

Okay, I have something to say and it’s not going to make me popular.  You see, everywhere I look — blogs, magazines, TV shows if I watched them — they all send the same message: Always use the freshest ingredients you can find.  And I think we’re taking this idea just a little bit too far. 

Yes, fresh ingredients are good.  Yes, they taste better.  But isn’t ALWAYS using them just a little extreme.  You can’t always have the epitomy of freshness.  Sooner or later, your greens are going to experience that not-so-fresh feeling and even the most absorbent Roca-Pads with wings aren’t going to be able to help.  So, are we just throwing these wilty greens away?  Nonsense.  (Actually, yes, my husband threw them away and I cursed him.)

So, from now on, let’s just amend ourselves to say: Use the freshest of ingredients only when it matters.  Like if you have one opportunity, and only one, to impress someone (like your insufferable mother-in-law!!!).  Or, if it’s your last supper.  Or if it’s summertime and fresh produce keeps dropping from the sky and hitting you in the face.  This is okay.  But for your average winter weekday meal for your dumb family?  I don’t think so.

Take last week.  I wasn’t going to say anything, but that rice pudding in the photo was made with expired cream.  That’s right: expired AND previously opened.  It smelled…a little funky.  But I suspected it was just the congealed stuff on the inside of the carton, and, lo and behold, once I poured it through a strainer to get rid of the lumps, it tasted totally fine.  (Kind of like when you’re making a crème anglaise and you cook it until just a few curdles form, you strain them out, and it’s totally way better than when those curdles were just a glimmer in your eye.  Don’t pretend like you don’t know what I’m talking about.)

Now, some of you might find yourself jumping to conclusions about the vomiting that wracked our household around the same time as the rice pudding consumption.  You can’t prove anything.  It was a virus, and do you know how I know?  Because I do this kind of thing all the time.  And rarely, if ever, do I vomit from my own cooking.  I only vomit in swanky, high-end restaurants where they use the freshest of ingredients.

So, the moral of this story is: stop being such a bunch of food snobs, you food snobs.  And, additionally, I’m now off the hook for having to cook for any of my friends or family ever again!

Comments

[ilva]

OK, I coming out of the closet, I am a user of not so fresh vegetables (not milk products though, I have a slight problem with them after having been made to drink sour milk by my mean and nasty grandmother when little and yes, I did vomit and no, it was not a virus) when I cook and I don't have any FRESH ones. Or because I don't want to waste them. Do I have to walk up and down our road now with a sign hanging around my neck? Or will I feel as if a stone has lifted from my heart as you say as a Swedish Chef?

[pyewacket]

My boyfriend kept a few turnips in his crisper for a few, um, months. When he took them out, they were, as he put it, "a little wrinkly and a little soft." But he cooked them anyway, because that's just the way he rolls, baby. And, lo and behold, he said those were the sweetest, tastiest turnips he ever had. So now he ages all his turnips - really.

Fresh ingredients are great, but when people get too obsessed about it, they would do well to remember wine and cheese and Scotch and pickles and even stew, which everyone knows tastes better the second or third day, or winter squash, which really needs to sit in cold storage for a few weeks to sweeten. A little age never hurt anything.

[Dad]

If you think this gets you off the hook cooking for me then you've obviously been taking a few hallucinogens along with your curdled milk and moldy rice! Heck, week(s) old ingredients are an upgrade for me!

[Tammy]

That's true, Dad. Must have been those wacky mushrooms.

Pyewacket, very well-said.

Ilva, a stone has been lifted. We're simply opposed to waste, and there will be a special place in heaven for us, post-botulism.

[Sally]

I hate it when my daughter visits me and goes through my refrigerator "cleaning it out". She chastised me for having some condiment that was over it's expiration date by a year! So what? It's pickled. It won't spoil. Right?

[Suzy]

Curdled milk? Make biscuits, girl!