Plastic Is Not Eternal.

Even a longstanding eater like myself can make a mistake once in a while. It's embarrassing to state the obvious, but I'm going to do it anyway:

DON'T EAT FOOD THAT IS TOO OLD.

We all have our individual ideas of where we're comfortable along The Spectrum of Food Safety. Some people, like roommate, are wary of eating pizza that has been left out overnight. Others see this pizza the next morning and are overjoyed to find their absolutely favorite thing to eat waiting for them the morning after. If forced to classify myself, I probably fall into the latter category.

Mind you, I have two standards of Food Safety: one applicable to the entire world, including my dining guests (fear not eating at my table!) and another standard applicable wholly to myself. It is this second rugged standard that sometimes gets me into trouble.

Take for instance, this morning, when I spotted two sticks of string cheese in the refrigerator and thought, wouldn't these be good and healthy office snacks during those slow hours in the afternoon? I threw them into my bag, gave them a home in the office fridge, and looked forward to my emergency snack later in the day.

Minutes ago, I chewed probably 20% of one of these sticks before realizing that, well, it just didn't taste so good.

I chewed a little more, mostly absent-mindedly. And then I thought, I wonder of this thing has an expiration date on the plastic wrapper.

Indeed it did:

26AUG2006. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that I am now in the year 2007, but my cheese is from yesteryear. And apparently, plastic is not eternal.

I suppose plastic almost is eternal in the landfill but not particularly so when it comes to protecting perishable dairy products. Why my own palate, which critically dissects the unrotten food prepared by others, got so dumbfounded by this piece of old cheese, I'm not sure. Perhaps it is because the Chinese have limited experience with dairy. We drink milk, but cheese and butter, the Two Pillars of French Civilization, are largely less thoroughly explored by us.

In fact, cultural backgrounds and family traditions have much to do with Where One Lies On The Spectrum of Food Safety. People in some countries still don't have regular refrigeration and must rely on other methods to avoid Death By Rotten Food:
- storing food in naturally cool places (holes in the ground, cellars, etc.)
- procuring only the amount of food you will eat for the day (fresh veggies at the market)
- repetitive heating to kill bacteria.

If you're raised by parents subscribing to alternative food preservation methods, you're bound to be one of those who are Pushing The Envelope of Food Safety. In truth, we all make these micro-judgments on a daily basis. Do we not all recognize that unmistakeable irridescent "sheen" that develops on ham when it's starting to go? What about giving the milk carton a good sniff?

Who's above doing that?

The Sheen and the Sniff are all widely accepted methods but sometimes neither protects you from absentmindedly eating old cheese. After all, isn't cheese really just some kind of fancy mold? Some cheeses are revered for their stink!

I figure I was doomed from the get-go.

The good news is after a few absent-minded extra bites, the String Cheese of Yesteryear went straight into the trash.

(After I took a picture of it, that is.)

And sometimes the Tummy has to say it one more time, just to be safe:

REMEMBER, DON'T EAT FOOD THAT IS TOO OLD!