The Sniff Test

Chris and I have differing opinions on when food in the refrigerator is still edible.

For the most part, as long as the food item still passes the "sniff test," I figure it is still edible.  The only foods which don't get the sniff test: bread, and meat.  Bread does not get the sniff test because you can usually tell if it's bad long before you need to smell it.  It's either hard as a rock, moldy, or (if it's been long enough) hard and moldy.  Meat does not get the sniff test because the thought of eating rotten meat really, really, really, grosses me out.  Sometimes I throw away meat before the expiration date, if it's been open in my fridge long enough.

Chris openly mocks my "sniff test" but, hey, I made it through college without once getting food poisoning.  Although I hear that all it takes is one really good bout of food poisoning to change a person's mind about how soon is too soon to throw food away.

Chris, on the other hand, is a tosser.  If the food item is even slightly questionable -- in the trash it goes.  "Honey," he says, "we can afford to go to the store and buy more cheese.  You don't have to cut the moldy spot off and keep eating it."  And he then proceeds to throw away the moldy cheese, the bendable carrots, and the lettuce that was only slightly slimy on some of the leaves while I follow him to the trashcan wailing, "nooooo...I was going to eat those carrots, I swear!"

Okay, maybe it doesn't go down quite that dramatically.  But you get the picture.  So given our history, you would think Chris would've worked on his approach a little bit.  You know, try and let me down gently to expect that certain items in the refrigerator would be missing.  Nope, not my husband.  I walk into the kitchen tonight and am immediately bombarded with, "Honey, I cleaned out the fridge and I threw away EVERYTHING!"

Now, had he started with, "Honey, the fridge was getting a little crowded so I had to toss some things that were spoiled." I might have been a little more receptive.  But I was immediately on the defensive after hearing that he had tossed, as he put it, EVERYTHING!

"Like what did you throw away?"

"EVERYTHING!"

"Um, okay..." since he won't give me specifics, I open the fridge and start digging frantically through the vegetable drawers.

"Where is my spinach?"

"It was slimy."

"No it was NOT.  I just bought it a few days ago!  I just ATE some YESTERDAY!"

"It was slimy.  Even our roommates saw that it was slimy."

"Whatever, so it magically got slimy overnight?  Hmph."

Chris holds up a tupperware container.  "How about this?  Can I throw this out?  It's been in the fridge forever."

I glanced at it.  "That's not mine.  I don't care if you toss it."

"Are you sure it isn't yours?  It looks like something you would eat."

It finally clicked, and I realized that was the Thai Stir-Fry Chicken that I cooked last month.  "Oh, yeah, maybe it was mine.  But you can toss it."

Chris laughed. "See, it's been so long that you don't even REMEMBER it."

I just rolled my eyes (because that last part was kind of true) and walked out of the kitchen, leaving him to his fun.  However now that I think about it, I don't recall seeing that half a red onion that was only barely dried out at the cut part and still good for dicing...