I noticed that David Lebovitz mentioned a concept that occurs with food stuffs in all walks of life. It is the idea that some things are too special to eat. He mentions that even in a high end restaurant that specialized in expensive, seasonal foods and went out of their way to procure the very best ingredients, some were lost because they were deemed "too good to use."
It sounds wasteful, since the food that is so precious often goes uneaten until it is past its prime, but I know that I am not the only one who is guilty of doing the same thing on at least one occasion. I have "saved" perfect strawberries, wanting to use them with the perfect dessert, only to discover that they've gone bad by the time I want to use them. I have jars of gourmet marinades, probably from gift baskets or weekends in the wine country, that now have a thin layer of dust because I have yet to open them. Why is it that the "right time" to eat something doesn't always seem like the present?
I now make an active effort to use things up when I get them. Wonderful food is no less "special" because I don't wait too long to taste it and, in fact, may be even better because it's fresher; you will never find yourself scraping mold off the surface of a jar of a particularly wonderful chocolate spread because you waited too long to open it.
What Can I Get You Folks? - Eating Out for Thanksgiving
In Defense of Guy Fieri
'Top Chef Vegas' - And Then There Were Five
