h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Speaking of long shelf life...

I bought two small cartons of cream the week before Christmas. I used one of them up between Christmas and New Year and the other one turned out to be surplus to requirements so I figured I'd do something with it in the coming weeks. It has a use-by date of January 12th.

I didn't actually open it until maybe late Feb and it was okay. I can't remember what I used it for but I only used a little and put it back in the fridge.

I just discovered it, pushed to the back of the fridge, while I was putting the milk away today, opened the flaps and cautiously put my hooter to it...

It's perfectly fine Not a hint of cheesiness about it. That's almost three months after its use-by date and more than a month after I opened it. Even if you accept that use-by dates are flexible, that's stretching it a bit.

When I was a child, I got a bad half pint of Borden's chocolate milk from my school cafeteria. I took a big swig and it was like runny cottage cheese.

Ever since, the merest whiff of turning and milk is tossed out. At midnight of its sell by date, tossed out. If the light hits it funny, tossed out.

Oh, and that's at other folks homes. I don't buy milk products other than cheeses for myself.

I only buy milk, to make hot choc, occasional white sauces, or for visitors who put it in tea or coffee Oh, and for using in making bread of course

Every now and again I decide to make a recipe and then notice that cream is an ingredient. At that point I'll often choose a different recipe because I rarely need to use all the cream in the carton, but if it's as bulletproof as this I can almost keep some in the fridge all the time

The same thing goes for cow juice too. It almost never goes off before I use it all up, and we're talking about half-gallon cartons. I put soya milk in my tea so the cow juice is only used for cooking purposes, and sometimes not even then - when a cake recipe calls for milk to thin it down to a dropping consistency I normally use yoghurt for that because it adds a little extra flavour that milk doesn't.

I seem to recall a journal entry some time ago titled something like 'The milk that goeth not off'. Ha, yes! Here it is F50359?thread=5162005

2008... how time flies.

I do about the same, when I see a recipie with cream in it, unless I can find one that will use an entire* tub, I just useually can't be bothered, as the rest typically ends up going to waste...

You drink coffee though, don't you? That's where all my superfluous cream used to go. I never make coffee at home these days, and I don't think I've actually drunk any since I stopped working at the Drafthouse. Even then I didn't drink very much at all. But it's always best with cream

Let me rephrase that. When I do drink coffee I drink it black, usually, but if I'm going to add anything dairy-related to it cream is preferable over milk.

Phew, lawsuit avoided there I think Can't be too careful these days

I never have any problem using up cream. If there's any left, it just goes into a sauce for pasta or something, or done with mushrooms to have on toast.

Milk?! Cream?! with coffee!
*faints*
I've not had a coffee with milk since before December the 10th 1999

Oh... I'd not have any trubble using it up; but if I had a recipie calling for a tiny* bit, I'd just end up having the other two thirds of the tub as extra calories as you say, with pasta or something likely (I do a gorgeous very simple pasta thing, which is, well, basically bacon, lots, pasta fusilli or pen or chonchelli, etc., with double cream, lots of pepper, and mushrooms and garlic but... damnit that is a huge calory dose and I've got to think about my figure ya know Taken me years to get down to this weight, and I've still some way to go a few more pounds to loose and I'll drop below 13 stone

I often use yoghurt instead of milk or cream in cooking.

Coffee is black for me, as is tea (and I'm so German these days that tea is often some weird herbal tea) but the Gruesomes seem to manage to use up all the spare milk.

I have just found a guinness&chocolate cake recipe. It calls for lots of cream. And I can only get a 4 pack of guinness but I only need half a can. #firstworldproblems

I have a number of recipes with beer as an ingredient, sweet and savoury. Most of them don't call for the exact contents of the bottle. What to do with the rest?

Such a dilemma, isn't it? But waste is a sin!

I've still never got round to trying the recipe I saw for 'Guinness bread'
The Guinness and beef and mushroom stew I do is just so tasty though, even if it does always pull on my heart strings, to pour a can of beer into the cooking pot

my made Guinness sorbet once. So tasty.

Oo... I can't 'picture' at all, how that would taste

I've made Guinness ice cream by combining Mary Berry's no-churn recipe with a stout ice cream recipe I got online. It was pretty damn good. Funny, I could have sworn I put it in the 'Okay chaps, I'm going in' thread.

If you want to try some very good beer recipes search for 'cuisine a la biere' and use Chrome or Google Translate to translate them into English (unless you're already fluent in French). The software will turn up some very odd translations that need a bit of working out, but once you get the hang of it it's a goldmine of good stuff

Or you could...you know...drink it?

B

Oh don't be silly. Next you'll be telling us to put baked beans on toasted bread! Wait... that sounds like a good idea

That is, the main reason I've hardly ever used alcohol in cooking... It just breaks my heart to do it, even though I know its gona make soemthign really tasty...

Mind I've a can of industrial strength ICI brewed chemical cider some strange nutter gave me, which is lurking in the fridge, I ain't gona drink it, that's for sure... so its either throw it down the loo and hope it only* removes the limescale, or throw it into a meal... naa... I don't think I could even face cooking with something that* revolting I know... I'll leave it outside, on my dustbin, and one of the local winos can kill themselves with it
Hmmm... does that count as an alturistic gesture or not?