darkoshi

My niece was staying at my house again this last year with her daughter. When they moved out, they left behind a lot of stuff to give away or get rid of.

Going through it (I'm still not finished), I found a closed grocery bag of what appeared to be some trash along with a full loaf of sourdough bread still in its cellophane package.

I have no idea how old the bread is; it could be anywhere from a few months old up to a year (though probably closer to the first). The numbers I found printed on the bag seem ambiguous, "24108 B". But it wasn't moldy and still felt soft like fresh bread. I didn't want to throw the marvelous mold-free bread away, especially as I was low on bread and usually like sourdough bread.

From what I've read, sourdough bread is naturally mold-resistant, but most sites only mention it lasting a few weeks at best, not months.

I finally opened the package today (a month after they left) to see if the bread still smelled ok. It doesn't smell like it's gone bad. But it doesn't smell good either; it has an acidic smell. Not having a fresh loaf right now to compare against, I'm not sure if that is normal. There's no visible mold on the slices.

I ate a nibble of the bread; it didn't have any flavor. Toasted, it was somewhat better - not great, but ok. I was hesitant to eat it because of the acidic smell and its being of unknown age. But I ate 2 slices as a test. That was half a day ago, and no ill effects from it so far.

The ingredients include "preservatives (cultured wheat starch, wheat flour, citric acid)".

It is in the fridge now. Maybe that will make it seem more normal to me, as I normally refrigerate any bread I buy.

Qiao bought a loaf of Sunbeam white bread recently (a first for him), and also left it out. I haven't inspected it closely but don't see any mold on it either.

(Sigh. I am slightly tempted to use LLM to put my thoughts into a better format rather than struggling to find the right words and put them into the right order myself. But no, I won't, and I haven't so far.)

My initial reaction on reading an email sent to me about this lawsuit was (what's the word? with slightly raised eyebrows, like are-you-kidding-me?).

The lawsuit contends that Clif Bar & Company (“Clif Bar”) made certain statements on the labels of various original Clif Bars and Clif Kid ZBars (“Class Products”) that are allegedly misleading because the statements suggested the bars are healthy, whereas Plaintiffs allege the bars are unhealthy because of their added sugar.

It sounds like a frivolous suit to me. So many products claim to be healthy or good for you in various ways despite added sugars and other ingredients. Why single out this company to sue? (On further thought I can see the logic in trying to reduce questionable claims on product labels, by going after some of the big companies first. But I don't feel personally misled by the words on their packaging. When I originally started buying Clif Bars, it was because they were vegan as well as a tasty snack for on-the-go. I don't buy them often anymore for a few reasons.... one of which, them being rather sweet and full of sugar and ergo not healthy, hah!)

So my initial thought (again) was to ignore it and not submit a claim for a payout that might be $5 or more, if the suit succeeds. I'm not interested in suing the company for that.

But the suit will go through regardless. If it wins, the company will have to pay the money, regardless. So why shouldn't I sign up to get a portion of that money? (Other than it not being worth the time and effort, which is a separate consideration.)

Class Action .org lists some other class action lawsuits you can sign up for. There's a privacy-related one against Patreon and Facebook. That sounds like one I'd want to join... Ah, I did get an email about that one back in October but simply starred the email. I must not have had time to deal with it yet.

I baked chocolate chip cookie bars tonight, yay! With regular flour, and they turned out good. Yum.

Yesterday I tried out a recipe I found for a chocolate mug cake using green plantain flour. It turned out bitter and not sweet. I suppose I'll still eat it, but I hope the other recipes I found mask the bitterness better. I thought I'd read somewhere that plantain flour is bitter when tasted raw, but not after cooking/baking.

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I emailed an organic sugar company to request them to consider selling their product in paper packaging like normal sugar, instead of in plastic bags and plastic jugs.

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Watch this endangered marmot play with a wildlife camera

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A can of BBQ baked beans which I opened contained as much sauce as beans. All that drippy liquid displeases me. I have a box of generic bran flakes cereal which is quite bland and doesn't taste good on its own. I stirred some into the soupy beans along with sliced vegan hot dogs and a few spoons of vegan mayo.
It turned out fantastic, delicious and not drippy anymore at all!

I finally used up the remainder of an 11-year-old packet of yellow stone-ground grits, after looking up some recipes. It actually tastes quite good this way, savory and somewhat creamy:

2/3 cup grits
5x that amount liquid; half soymilk and half water (1 + 2/3 cup of each)
2 vegetable bouillon cubes

I heated the water and soymilk and dissolved the bouillon cubes in it.
After bringing the liquid to a boil, I whisked in the grits and turned the temp to low.
I simmered the grits for an hour, stirring every few minutes to keep it from sticking to the bottom of the pot.
After removing it from the heat, I stirred in 2 tablespoons of non-dairy butter.

When I make brownies or cookie bars, the edges (naturally) end up harder or crunchier than the interior parts. When cutting them into like-sized pieces as I used to do, many of the pieces would (naturally) end up with at least one hard/crunchy edge. I disliked those parts as they would sometimes hurt* my mouth and gums when I bit on them.

A few years ago when making cookies bars, I started cutting off the hard parts first in a narrow strip along all 4 sides of the pan. That way, the rest of the cookie bars are pleasantly soft and chewy on all sides. As a bonus, I even enjoy eating the harder edges when they are cut this way. In narrow strips, they are easier to eat without hurting my mouth.

..

I very much dislike the rough dry fuzzy feeling of peach skins in my mouth. Therefore I peel peaches before eating them. But it seems a shame to throw away presumably healthy and rich-in-fiber peach skins, especially if the peach was reasonably ripe, in which case the skins aren't quite as bad.

So now I've found that I enjoy eating peeled peach skins on their own, as long as I fold each piece so that the fuzzy skin is on the inside and the (thin layer of) peach flesh is on the outside.

..

*I have what may be called a "prominent" alveolar ridge. I estimate it extends back at least 1cm behind my upper front teeth before curving up to the top of my palate. Chewing hard crunchy food often makes that area of my mouth sore. As does biting into hard fruit like apples or pears.

It's 4:45am and the outside temperature is still 78 degrees. In the month of May. Wow.

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There's no environmental benefit to having vitamins in glass bottles if the sellers wrap it in tons of bubble-wrap to keep the glass from breaking. It may as well have been in plastic bottles. I didn't realize these vitamins were in glass bottles when I was ordering them, but still. Not to mention the plastic sheaths the manufacturers envelop the glass bottles in.

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This is my new favorite yogurt: Cocojune Vanilla Chamomile

It's so light, fluffy, creamy. Mildly sweet and only slightly tangy.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention: it is sold in paper cups, not plastic!
The foil seals on top are a bit hard to pull open but I realized today that if I tear the foil tab in half down the middle, and then pull each half separately, it comes off easy.

I opened the can of mushy peas today. They taste good. They taste, if I remember right, much like Campbell's Green Pea soup. An item that I've never found a good ready-made vegan substitute for before now. I still don't like the idea of there being food coloring in these mushy peas though, and these were too expensive to buy on a regular basis.

I ought to cook it from scratch using dried peas. How hard can it be? Peas are small so they should cook fast, no matter if I get the split or whole ones, right? That may have been the difficulty when I tried it in the past though - cooking them long enough to get soft without them burning on the bottom of the pan.

Last year I found out unfrosted poptarts are vegan. (The frosted ones contain gelatin.) That made me nostalgic, so I bought a box each of unfrosted cinnamon and strawberry poptarts. They still taste like I remember from childhood. Sugary-sweet morning memories; memories that go along with Saturday morning cartoons on the TV. Flintstones, He-man, Thundercats Ho!

Did you know even a single unfrosted poptart contains 12 grams of sugar, which per the nutrition panel is 24% of the recommended daily intake? (Contrary to what I'd expect, the frosted ones purportedly don't have much more sugar than the unfrosted ones.) That is one reason I haven't eaten up these 2 boxes of tarts yet; I only take them out once in a big while as a treat.

I heat mine in the toaster, but the microwave heating instructions on the box surprise me:
"Heat 3 seconds at a time until warm enough."

Does Kellogg's truly expect anyone to start and stop their microwave every *3* seconds to check on the warmth of their tarts? I am guessing those instructions are to avoid any lawsuits due to accidental over-heating of the tarts, since some microwaves heat a lot faster than others. But I wonder if three seconds may not even be long enough for a microwave to start emitting its rays. My microwave generally needs to run for a minimum of 20 seconds to result in any noticeable heating of the food.

I think of cooking this whole wheat couscous for dinner.
The container is about 3/4 empty, so I could finally use it up.
The contents smell stale, but maybe not too bad. I think fresh couscous may smell the same way?
I read the date on the container...
"BEST IF USED BEFORE MAY 21, 2010"

What, 2010!!!??? How can I have had this in my cupboard since 2010!??

Well then, it probably really is stale and better not to be eaten.

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I could have sworn I bought these 2 boxes of Matzo Ball mix 2 years ago. I thought that was when I made matzo balls for the first time, for Christmas.
But no, the date on these packages is JUN 27 2018.
And when I check my notes, it was Thanksgiving of 2017 when I made them last, not 2019.
Sigh.
At least these aren't too old to still cook. But it would require more effort than I want to do tonight. Maybe this weekend.

..

So I open a can of stuffed grape leaves to eat with the leftover canned Delhi Saag and Pigeon Peas which I opened yesterday.

But then while heating that I think to myself:
That couscous has been patiently sitting in that cupboard since 2010.. All the things that have happened in my life since 2010!... patiently waiting.
HOW CAN I POSSIBLY just throw it away!? No, I have to at least cook it and see how it turns out.

..
Update, 2021/12/11:
I cooked the couscous with a bouillon cube and a tablespoon of margarine (instead of the teaspoon indicated by the instructions). It tasted pretty good, better than when I cooked it in the past; that must be the right way to cook couscous.

Getting ready for bed, I feel a pinprick on my calf. Turns out that a sewing pin was stuck (sewn into) in the bottom seam of my pajama pants, from when I hemmed them shorter *last* November. I have multiple PJ pants and only wear these in the colder half of the year, but still. All the times I wore these and washed them since last year, and only discovered this now. ::amused::

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For tomorrow, I pre-ordered a cake and 3 dishes from a local vegan restaurant: mac'n'cheese, sesame ginger okra, and squash casserole.

I cooked a dish of my own, stir-frying together hominy, some nuts, lima beans, green soybeans, and spices.

I also baked cornbread muffins from a box mix. They taste quite good, the way I like cornbread to be. The main ingredient listed on the box is sugar. I guess that is why, when I make cornbread from scratch, with the main ingredient being cornmeal, it never tastes the same good.

My mom is making a sweet potato pie and marinated/spiced tofu.
It will be five of us getting together.

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I only found out last night that I can now get a COVID booster shot. When I checked the SC website a few days ago, after the federal announcement, it still indicated my age range was ineligible. I didn't want to get a shot today in case it made me feel ill for tomorrow. But I may go get it on Friday.

My allergies started acting up again lately. Yesterday while mowing leaves in the yard, I wore a face mask. My nose didn't get runny! It did require finesse, though, to situate my safety glasses to where they wouldn't fog up.

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I used this method for cooking some very old kidney beans:
Food Storage Friday - Cooking Old Beans

How old? I have no idea!*. As they were so old, I used twice as much baking soda and let them soak in the baking soda water overnight. Then I did it again today with fresh water and baking soda and a 4-hour soak. Then I finally cooked them in a pressure cooker.

It worked! They got soft.

*I'd stored the beans in a neat Korean glass jar, which is vaguely familiar to me, but which is also so old that I don't remember where it came from. The label on the jar is for hot chili paste, which I'm sure I didn't buy nor eat.

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Vegan Ready-to-bake Cinnamon Rolls! From Kroger, Simple Truth Organics brand. Tastes pretty good. I mostly got them for the nostalgia factor.

I also have fond memories of ready-to-bake biscuits. The kind with all the flaky layers that you could peel off one at a time. Maybe I'll find vegan ones like that someday. But then again, I have them still in my memory, so I don't really need to.

Vegan Ready-to-bake Chocolate Chip Cookie dough! From Kroger, Simple Truth brand. I'd seen them before, but this time the price was actually reasonable. I haven't baked them yet.

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Walmart had Kind-brand vegan ice cream pints, in Pistachio flavor. I was pleasantly surprised to come across them, not having had vegan pistachio-flavored ice cream before.

The ice cream is green as one would expect, using spirulina and turmeric as natural colorings.

But the flavor tastes like *real* pistachios. The ice cream also has a bunch of whole pistachio nuts in it. Therefore although it really tastes like pistachios, it does not taste like typical pistachio ice cream, whose flavor (natural or artificial) is based on bitter almond (see this prior post on that topic).

Truth be told, I don't like real pistachio flavor as much as bitter almond flavor. So while this Kind pistachio ice cream is okay, it's not what I was expecting.

Edited to add: I had an idea! I could sprinkle some almond extract onto the ice cream! That'll probably help.

Black Raspberry Chip Oatmilk Non-Dairy Frozen Dessert - this Kroger-brand non-dairy ice cream flavor is very good. It's creamy; not overly sweet like fruit sorbets tend to be. The chocolate chips are thin enough to melt in the mouth, and also as I like them, not very sweet. The color is a nice pale purple.

The strawberry graham flavor is quite good too.

December 2004 - I bought acorn starch at a Korean grocery.

September 2008 - I used some of the acorn starch (for the first time) to make a batch of acorn shortbread, but by mistake used the wrong amount of margarine.

Today: I used the remaining acorn starch to make another batch of shortbread. It was by now over 16 years old, but still seemed fine by scent and appearance.

To use up the starch now rather than leaving some left over for another decade, and to use up some other items, and to make it sweeter than last time, I adjusted the recipe and used:

1 cup acorn starch
1/2 cup buckwheat flour
1 1/2 cup white flour
1 cup margarine, melted
3/8 cup sugar
~1/2 cup maple (flavored?) syrup with walnut pieces in it
2 egg's worth of egg replacer powder

The dough wasn't dry and crumbly this time, but quite thick. I spread it out in 2 small pans so that the dough was approximately 3/4 to an inch high. I pricked the dough with a fork and baked it about 40 minutes.

While baking, it smelled of maple from the syrup.

It turned out well, but not particularly special. It makes a nice snack. The flavor is mild; mostly maple I'd say along with a not-quite-burnt but toasty flavor like a baked graham-cracker crust.

Please STOP this trend of making ice cream container lids out of plastic!
They're harder to open; the plastic digs into the skin of my fingers.
Paper lids work just fine and are more bio-degradable.

The only explanation I can think of for this trend is that some people who don't know how to properly place the lids on their containers must have complained about the paper edges of the lids getting bent inwards.

I thought it used to be that typical American-style soft bread which was left out of the refrigerator would get moldy within a short period of time. I remember (images?) of a single piece of white bread left out (probably for demonstration purposes), getting moldy over the course of a few days. That memory must be from ~40 years ago. But I also remember (from the 80s or 90s?) images of a (McDonald's hamburger) left out for a long time, and neither the bun nor meat going bad, demonstrating how many preservatives were being used.

For as long as I can remember, I've always kept bread in the fridge. That makes the texture much less pleasant, but stiff bread is better than moldy bread, right? I typically buy organic bread without artificial preservatives, except for the rye bread which I can't find in organic. Here in SC it gets hot and very humid, so mold-growth is faster than in other environments. I usually toast bread before eating it or making it into sandwiches (which I also store in the fridge for lunches for the next week) anyway.

But while my niece was here she never put her bread in the fridge. When she bought a loaf of an organic brand and left it out, it ended up getting moldy within a week or two, as I'd expect.

But another time she got a loaf of "Nature's Own Butterbread" and stuck it in the kitchen cabinet. When she moved out last week, there were still 6 slices left. The bread has been in there for at least 2 months, and still shows no signs of mold. It intrigues me, ergo this post.

Bread kept in its packaging must stay good longer compared to a single slice left out in the open air. But still, over 2 months seems a long time. Maybe typical "white" bread these days isn't the same as bread in the 1970s? I'd have thought the same amount of preservatives were already being used back then, but maybe not.

Also, the ingredient list for this bread doesn't even specifically mention any "preservatives":

unbleached enriched flour (wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, sugar, contains 2% or less of each of the following: yeast, butter (made from milk), soy flour, wheat gluten, cultured wheat flour, salt, calcium sulfate, vinegar, monoglycerides, enzymes, monocalcium phosphate, soy lecithin, ascorbic acid, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid.

The vinegar and ascorbic acid may have some preservative effect.
According to The Best Preservatives for Bread, soy lecithin also acts as a preservative.

I take my first taste of this:
strawberry banana
So Delicious
Dairy Free
coconutmilk
yogurt alternative

and think "It's like that Dannon!"
(re: the strawberry banana flavor)
the memory of which must be from between 1980 and 1986

and I remember again
the yogurt cups back then weren't plastic;
they were wax-coated paper
with rolled lips at the top
that you could unroll
and chew with your teeth.
I don't remember how they were sealed shut on the top.
Aluminum foil like now, or something else?

That sudden memory may even be false.
Was it really Dannon I ate back then?
Did they have this flavor?
I'm pretty sure there was a vanilla flavor I ate.
I think the vanilla came in blue containers. But maybe yellow.
Not sure I really had strawberry banana way back then,
that might be from more recently.

There's this which mentions them using paper-wax cups in the past:
http://blog.trilliumarts.com/2010/03/dannon-yogurt-cups-part-1.html

According to this photo, they did have vanilla in a blue container.
(Photo from: How Dannon Made Yogurt Mainstream in America After Starting as a Staple for Immigrants)

But I wasn't able to find out how long ago they started making strawberry-banana.

I went grocery shopping to 2 stores on the other side of town which I haven't been to in over 5 months, and I bought *all* the goodies.

Overheard; another customer asking a store employee:
"If I were canned corn, where would I be?"

Came home with:

A chocolate-glazed donut (and it was fresh, not stale like sometimes happens!), 4 different kinds of vegan chocolate chip cookies, lemon poppy mini-muffins (they are fresh, not stale!), 3 kinds of popsickles, lime-zest corn chips, strawberry & mango yogurt drinks, ginger-pear drink, berries, berries, more berries, starfruit,...

I keep telling myself that I don't need to buy any other kinds of vegan margarine or butter, as I've found 2 that taste great, better than all the rest, and I only want to buy them from now on. But I keep finding new ones that I'm curious to try. The one I got today is the same brand as one of my 2 faves, but a more spreadable version made out of oatmilk.

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While shopping, I hardly ever look at other people in the store. My focus is on the food (or occasionally on other things that catch my attention*). Other people are basically obstacles to avoid. But now with Covid, it's even worse. Every time I pass someone in the aisles, I feel an obligation to avert my head to avoid any chance of breathing on them, even through the facemask.

*like the swirling rolling waves of cloudy mist above an open-top refrigerated display case.

Note to self: Don't buy Kroger store-brand potato chips anymore. They're not salty enough. And two bags (both probably bought at the same time) had oil leaking out the seam like the seam hadn't been sealed shut well enough.

I'm considering going shopping tonight, even though it's already getting late. Because I'm out of corn chips, and snacks are getting scarce. I've been missing having cookies, though the stores don't have ones I much like, so going shopping won't really help with that. I ought to go back to my place and bake some chocolate chip cookies.

I've still got 3 carrots, a pear, and a bag of Food Lion potato chips (not opened yet, so their saltiness is unknown). Some cake and peanuts. Snack bars. Other nuts. Chocolate. It ought to be enough. I hate being out of corn chips though. I should just deal with it and eat all the other snacks up. Completely. I can live without corn chips. Heck, I've got a shaker of salt.

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I was at my mom's place for the rental bed delivery, since she had to be at work at that time. The mattress turned out to be one of those foam ones, a "bed in a box". Ashley Furniture brand. Both it and the bed-frame were definitely new items; that was very apparent from the packaging. I checked Amazon, and the same bed-frame is on sale there for $150, and the very same mattress for $439.

So the $150 which my mom is paying for the first month is about a quarter of the actual price, or maybe even more if the wholesale price is less than what Amazon sells it for. Still, it seems that if RentACenter allows it to be rented for a single month, that they'd still lose money on it? Unless they take advantage of a free-returns deal from the manufacturer.

Maybe RaC makes it hard to return items, requiring them to be in pristine condition. Maybe most people end up keeping the items for multiple months even if they didn't originally plan to (which I suspect might end up happening with my mom).

My mom didn't ask whether RaC will pick the items up for free, or if she'll have to pay for that. We certainly won't be able to fit it back into the box that it came in. For that matter, it won't even fit into the plastic cover it came in, due to mattress's foam expansion, so how could one cover it to keep it clean in transport? In the mattress encasement that I ordered, perhaps?

While browsing Amazon, I found that they even sell "bed in a box" mattresses with innersprings!

While at my mom's house, I wore my surgical face mask for a good 3 hours straight, and it didn't bother me much. Even though it was about 90 degrees in the house to begin with, and even with the A/C turned on, only got down to 87 by the time I left. It's good to know I can do that when necessary. Besides setting up the bed frame and mattress for her, I also fixed a problem with her printer. That turned out being a known issue with a Windows update, for which another special Windows update was required.

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There are several topics in this post for which none of my existing tags are very good matches.
Rentals. Mask-wearing. Mattresses.

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Darkoshi

Darkoshi's Enchantment

May 2025

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Page generated Wednesday, May 28th, 2025 04:20 am

Entries tagged with food

sourdough bread longevity

class action lawsuit payouts; claims of "healthy" products

cookies, sugar, marmots

thickened baked bean sauce

Grits

mouth sensitivities

vanilla chamomile

mushy peas

them tarty pops so sweet

this happens too often (but not usually to this extent)

thanks be giving, pins be pricking

novembahh

Pistachio ice cream flavor

black raspberry chip

Acorn Shortbread

To the Ice-Cream Companies (including the non-dairy ones):

shelf-stable bread

tasty memory flash, maybe

where would i be?

snackish