blue chicken

Chicken via Flickr

In the time before kids (BK), when cooking at home was a special occasion and grocery shopping a novelty, uneaten food would accumulate in the fridge until one of us was inspired to eat it. More often than I care to admit, we'd see an expiration date come and go and send uneaten food to the trash bin.

I'm not sure I remember the circumstances that led up to the "blue chicken incident" and don't know why this particular piece of poultry remained in our refrigerator for so long (urgent trip to Uzbekistan, maybe?) but it did. In fact this chicken spent so much time wrapped in its blue grocery bag on the bottom shelf of our refrigerator that it underwent some kind of cerulean metamorphosis. It absorbed the blue tint of its plastic home. Not only did our forgotten meal smell like a thousand deaths, but it glowed like a radioactive smurf.

Now that I have children, it's pretty rare that anything remains in our refrigerator past its prime. It's rare that I even need to check an expiration date once I leave the store. Until tonight.

No, there wasn't a blue chicken in our fridge. But I did notice that those bone-in chicken breasts I had planned on using for Taco Thursday had yesterday listed as its sell-by date. And because I will forever remember the long drive to the nearest dumpster (with Brian riding in our open trunk) to dispose of our blue chicken, I'm a bit cautious.

So I went online to do some research and discovered the goldmine of food preservation: a website called Still Tasty. If you want to know how long that bison steak will last in the freezer or ReddiWip in the fridge, look no further. I don't know who these people are or why they've decided to make my life so much easier, but my nose (and my belly) is thankful.