Fridge Rant Follow Up
Don’t know why this didn’t post earlier, but anyway…FYI
It is 4/16, and I just ate a piece of the lunch meat I mentioned in my previous post, which was bought on 4/4. It has been in my lunch box with no ice packs or anything for 2 ½ hours, it is pretty much room temp. It smells ok and tastes ok, except for the fact that room temp lunch meat is weird even if it is fresh, lunch meat should either be hot from the stove or cold from the fridge, but whatever. I have put the remaining meat back into a mini fridge and will finish it later. I will resume this rant in a few hours to update my health status.
For full disclosure I should note that I am a God fearin, Jesus believin man, so it is possible that I may be kept from getting sick eating the crap that others might get sick…
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Fridge Knowledge – Take 1 – Meat
It is time to end the ridiculousness. Every time I try to ascertain via the internet whether the leftovers in my fridge are still good, I get the same BS. With the exception of a microscopic number of websites, pretty much
all I can get is the party line from either the FDA or the USDA, and considering who these institutions (organizations?) actually are and the level of corruption and underhanded dealings they traffic in, I do not believe the recommendations.
It’s not just that I don’t believe them on principle, but I know for a fact based on repeated personal experience that the recommendations I am reading are hogwash. (I wanted to say horse sh1t, but didn’t want to be too vulgar). So I am here to pass on what I have gleaned from my daring. Let’s start with what got me on this rant in the first place tonight: the Easter ham.
So right now it is Tuesday, the 10th day from Easter Sunday. There is leftover ham in my fridge. I’m not sure if I should eat it or not, so I’m not going to at this stage of the game. It smells fine and looks fine, and there doesn’t appear to be any slimyness coating the outside. According to the experts, and 98% of the websites out there, it is good in the fridge for 3-4 days and then should be discarded no questions asked, the end. HOWEVER, I know for a fact that it will keep in my fridge for 7 days, no need to even question it. Point in case: I just ate some this past Sunday, and if I was going to get food poisoning from it I am more than confident the symptoms would have shown up by now. Of course I always perform the smell test before chowing down, just in case there is some anomaly going on. I’ve had food poisoning and it is something to be avoided at all costs. This isn’t the first – or the second – time I’ve played this “beyond three days in the fridge” form of Russian roulette. I’ve been doing it for years.
I also have some Oscar Meyer Deli Fresh turkey breast lunch meat in the fridge that is 11 days old, I ate 3 pieces today. Not sure how long it’ll last but you can bet I won’t be afraid to eat it tomorrow. My thinking is this: meat stinks when it is bad. I have had meat go bad in the fridge, I was a bachelor at one time. It also often times changes color when it starts going bad. On top of that, lunch meat in particular is loaded with preservatives in order to preserve profit margin potential for the heartless corporations that put it on the market.
So without further ado, I give you my personal experience based recommendations for these two meats in the fridge, and keep in mind I don’t think these time frames are pushing the envelope:
Cooked Holiday Ham that you can taste the salt in: 7 days
Store bought, big brand (not fresh from the deli) lunch meat: 12 days
Cooked bacon: I can’t even fathom a guess, but I know 2 weeks is nothing. I’ve cooked bacon after sitting in the fridge for two weeks uncooked. (Store bought, prepackaged, that is). I can’t speak on deli products because I’m not rich like that.
The real joke is that the other guys’ websites even parrot the recommendation it should be thrown it if it’s been in the freezer for 2-3 months. The freezer!! Hello???? Nothing goes bad in the freezer. It might loose some deliciousness, but it is safe to eat.
Critical Thinking Skills
13 lines of reason that form a foundation for critical thinking.
1) Does it / will it affect me (us)?
a. If not, then who freaking cares? Why let it bother you?
2) Do not resist something that has no power.
a. If you do:
1. you give it power – even if it is just marketing.
2.You have given it more attention than it ever would have received if you’d ignored it. You have essentially become its tool
b. Do not be misled
3) Does it increase the power of one person (or group) over another (involuntarily)?
4) Is it Constitutional?
5) Does it (will it) make people that agree on 90% of issues fight among themselves?
a.If so, the issue may exist solely for that purpose
b. see #1
6) Does it break a previous agreement?
7) What will it cost, and what is the ROI?
a. Who pays?
b. Who benefits – Cui bono?
8) Is my personal bias influencing my judgment on this?
9) What is the result – what are the consequences?
10) What happens if we do nothing or leave it alone?
11) Could it potentially lead to more government intrusion in the future, or intrusion into more areas?
12) Do I really need to have an opinion or get involved in this?
13) Make the opposing side’s argument for them.
a. Play devil’s advocate b. what are their supporting arguments? Are they valid – do they make sense to me?
Resilience efforts de jour, 3/30/15. Sometimes you have to do it exhausted.
After working 10 hours at work on a Monday – the start of a week where corporate politics has crapped all over everyone’s good mood and job security – I came home, cooked dinner, and kicked up my feet to watch a documentary (Farmageddon) with my first born before heading off to an early bedtime. I knew she only had about 30 minutes of watching before she had to take off to go exercise with some friends, but that was cool because I figured she wouldn’t be that into it anyway. She was digging it and as she was leaving she said she was going to finish watching it this week. I settled in to watch the rest before going to bed, but after about 10 more minutes I was so disgusted with the way of things in this society, and the drive to free myself from my shackles was so great, that I got up and went outside to dig and plant even though it was getting dark. I planted another tomato plant and some snap peas. It wasn’t much but it was something.
If I’m not going to do it tired, then it might not get done at all. I am so over being dependent on the way things are. It’s exit strategy time.
The Challenges of Getting Ahead of the Curve
Warning: the following is a rant.
As a single dad with a household to maintain, and very limited 
resources, it is so very apparent – and constantly so – that no man is an island. When money is limited and time is as well, any single person out there struggling at the 9 to 5, in a world they don’t really belong in, can’t achieve the level of independence that someone with a supportive spouse can. There is just too much work and too many moving parts for the paltry two days you get for doing everything that needs attention. Not only do we have to take care of things that every one of the sheeple have to deal with – paying bills, grocery shopping, oil changes, laundry, mowing, changing light bulbs, cleaning the bathrooms, cleaning the kitchen, etc… – but we must also find time for putting systems in place that will allow us a more sustainable and healthier lifestyle.
It seems to me that the powers of this world are more than glad to allow things to go smoothly for those who just keep buying in to the status quo – the “Amerikan Dream” (easy credit, big ag GMO foods, consumerism, etc), but if you are trying to change the dynamic and live a life of sustainability and resilience then those same powers make a concerted effort to stop you. In this case the powers to which I am referring are not the people who depend upon our dependence on the systems, but the supernatural – the spiritual – powers that exist in this world. If that concept is to unscientific for you, then just think of it as a reference to Murphy’s Law.
Every weekend I have so much to do on the two days I am not required to be in my shackles at the cubicle gulag, and rarely does it all get accomplished. Add to the mix the fact that it is now planting season and the workload increases even more. It starts to become overwhelming.
Point in case: I have some trees that arrived this week (after an extremely suck week of work in which the politics of the place have the high muckety mucks flipping out) and they need to go into the ground. My youngest was very sick this week and I was sleep deprived, so no holes have yet been dug to get the trees into the ground. I have a couple of quick errands that need to be run so I threw a load of laundry in the wash so that they would be ready for the drier when I return. One of the few examples in which I think multitasking is actually beneficial. Well lo and behold, there is no water coming into the washer from the hot side. I just absolutely cannot afford a plumber or washer repair technician right now. I guess Murphy’s Law doesn’t like the fact that my stove crapping out a few weeks ago didn’t slow me down a bit, since I have a workaround (a Coleman camp stove, electric skillet, and toaster over) in my preps.
So now rather than planting trees (and every other crop I need to buy and get into the ground) I have to figure out what I am going to do about this situation. I’ll do some research and try to fix it myself, and hope that it doesn’t take all day. As I sit here typing it occurs to me that I guess I could just wash everything in cold. IDK, I hope this doesn’t mean my washer is about to join my stove in the land of obsolescence.
SuburbanResilience 