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When you go on vacation and your house will be empty for a week or more, do you throw away food that might spoil before you go, or do you wait till you come home and then throw away what has spoiled?
Me, I never throw anything away until I absolutely have to. Everything gets left behind, and if it's
bad enough when I get home, I cut off the bad parts. I'm leaving for six weeks, and I'll probably drink the milk when I get home, or at lest use if for baking.
Neither, you use what you have in your home until it is gone then IF you really need something you go to the grocery and purchase that item only in the amount that you will need until you leave.
As far as the milk goes, if you drink six week old milk or use it in baking I would not be willing to partake in consuming anything you cook or bake.
As far as the food goes, if you "cut off the bad part" and use the rest I definitely will not be consuming anything that you cook or bake, ever.
I have an auto immune liver disease and one meal or snack in your home could put me in the hospital or the morgue or both.
Food is expensive. Priced European style, yet total cr@p. So I conserve as much as possible.
But, I always empty out anything not in the freezer, and plan to consume what's left before I leave. I put frozen stuff and, importantly, an intact, non-distorted stick of butter, beneath some "freeze packs" covered by a large pan of ice before I leave. If that stick of butter has changed shape, I assume power was off long enough to render that frozen stuff no longer useable.
If your brie is moldy, yes, toss it. Hard cheeses like cheddar are fine. I'm sure you know what bleu cheese is!
Yes, I know what bleu cheese is. I sometimes buy that little container of crumbles, use it for my week of salads for lunch, and it's gone. It never stays in my fridge longer than 5 days.
I only buy brie once in a while for a Christmas appetizer (to be baked in puff pastry).
Cheddar is usually purchased in a shredded bag, and used within a week. (see bleu cheese use above).
Otherwise, I buy the units of stick cheese to toss in my lunch. Works like a charm!
SPOILED milk is NOT the same as SOURED milk or CLABBERED milk.
Quality SOURED milk is when the good bacteria in unpasteurized milk do their thing.
CLABBERED milk is similar - unpasteurized milk is naturally thickened by the good bacteria.
YOGURT is when good bacteria do their thing and thicken milk (you know, live cultures, like Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus).
CHEESE is also made using specific good bacterial cultures.
When you go to your local Walmart and buy your gallon of pasteurized milk, the good bacteria are no longer in the product. That is what pasteurizing does - kills the bacteria.
RE: sauerkraut - this is a fermented food. Our good friends Lactobacillus are present. Cheese and yogurt also have those good bacteria.
The spoiled foods may have pathogens, such as overgrown yeast or mold or Paenibacillus, etc.
Somebody asked about sour cream....again, made with unpasteurized cream with lactic acid bacteria, you will get good sour cream. You will NOT get good sour cream by just allowing regular pasteurized milk to sit in your fridge for 6 weeks.
OP, if it takes you so dang long to consume a gallon of milk, why, oh why, don't you simply buy a smaller container?
Heck, I don't even eat leftovers, so there is no way I'd touch spoiled food.
^^^ THIS!!!
OP, your milk from Wally is pasteurized. All cultures needed to make it "clabber" are dead. This milk is absolutely unsuitable for cooking or for making cheese.
Store-bought, pasteurized milk doesn't clabber. It just putrefies and turns nasty. In other words - raw milk "sours" and pasteurized milk "rots".
That's the major difference.
While spoiled milk won't kill you, the bacteria have broken down the milk enough that there isn't much nutrition left in it. It also tastes terrible, and heating it won't return the fresh flavor. Drinking spoiled milk or eating spoiled food of any kind is unwise unless you're literally starving.
BTW: Clabber is raw milk that's curdled
Cabber is a food produced by allowing unpasteurized milk to turn sour at a specific humidity and temperature.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jtur88
I don't understand why everybody has this huge hangup over milk. Maybe there is something special about the bargain brand of milk I get at WalMart, but I doubt it. If you are careful not to contaminate the milk in the jug (like by drinking from the jug) and keep the lid on tight, there will be no extraneous organisms in there to spoil it. After a month or so, even pasteurized milk willl clabber. It gets lumpy and acquires a sour, but not necessarily unpleasant taste which can be overcome by adding a sweetener if you wish. Nearly all packaged breakfast cereals contain so much sugar, clabbered milk will be perfectly fine, if tangy, on your cereal. Drinking a nice cold glass full of it might need a spoon of suger, a dash of molasses, or something to make more in tune with your tastes. If you bake with it, you don't even need to use baking powder, the clabbered milk will lift your dough. Perfect for French toast, too, mixed with the egg. A few things it's not so good for, like mashed potatoes.
Clabbered milk is an important component in most traditional cultures -- before there was refrigeration, milk was consumed fresh only a few hours after milking, and then a starter was added to it to clabber it quickly.. I first encountered it in Romania, where at about 9 am, the milk merchants would clabber the unsold milk, and sell it with a wonderful deep fried sugared scone, and everyone took a break from work at about ten, when the lapte bahut was ready from street vendors.
I now actually look forward to the last of a jug of milk clabbering, it makes a nice diversion in my everyday breakfast routine.
I hope you understand now the difference between pasteurized and unpasteurized milk.
What you saw in Romania many years ago was a FRESH, unpasteurized (RAW) milk that indeed clabber, because of the living cultures that were present in the milk.
Wally World AKA Walmart does not sell raw milk.
I buy raw milk, so I know how it clabber. I do make a (fresh, farmers) cheese from it. And I do love to drink chilled curdled milk, so perfect for a hot summer day.
However there is no way to make a cheese from store-bought pasteurized milk, without ADDING live cultures, vinegar or lemon juice that will aid the spoilage.
I know when I'm going out of town and plan for it when I do my grocery shopping. I clean out the fridge before I leave and take the trash to the transfer station. I don't want to clean any messes when I come home from vacation. I have mountains of laundry to do. There's no point in creating more work for myself via my own laziness.
I make sure there isn't much food in the fridge if I know I am going away for 1 week or more. Just freezer stuff I leave. Eating spoiled food after you cut off the bad parts is gross!!! I guess the OP never got sick and does not worry abut contaminated food or the OP is Frugal.
Neither, you use what you have in your home until it is gone then IF you really need something you go to the grocery and purchase that item only in the amount that you will need until you leave.
As far as the milk goes, if you drink six week old milk or use it in baking I would not be willing to partake in consuming anything you cook or bake.
As far as the food goes, if you "cut off the bad part" and use the rest I definitely will not be consuming anything that you cook or bake, ever.
I have an auto immune liver disease and one meal or snack in your home could put me in the hospital or the morgue or both.
I totally agree with you and I don't have an auto immune disease.
^^^ THIS!!!
OP, your milk from Wally is pasteurized. All cultures needed to make it "clabber" are dead. This milk is absolutely unsuitable for cooking or for making cheese.
Store-bought, pasteurized milk doesn't clabber. It just putrefies and turns nasty. In other words - raw milk "sours" and pasteurized milk "rots".
That's the major difference.
While spoiled milk won't kill you, the bacteria have broken down the milk enough that there isn't much nutrition left in it. It also tastes terrible, and heating it won't return the fresh flavor. Drinking spoiled milk or eating spoiled food of any kind is unwise unless you're literally starving.
BTW: Clabber is raw milk that's curdled
Cabber is a food produced by allowing unpasteurized milk to turn sour at a specific humidity and temperature.
I hope you understand now the difference between pasteurized and unpasteurized milk.
What you saw in Romania many years ago was a FRESH, unpasteurized (RAW) milk that indeed clabber, because of the living cultures that were present in the milk.
Wally World AKA Walmart does not sell raw milk.
I buy raw milk, so I know how it clabber. I do make a (fresh, farmers) cheese from it. And I do love to drink chilled curdled milk, so perfect for a hot summer day.
However there is no way to make a cheese from store-bought pasteurized milk, without ADDING live cultures, vinegar or lemon juice that will aid the spoilage.
It is truly insane that this has to be explained.
It's even more insane that the poster will no doubt argue it till blue in the face.
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