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.
Cakes so amazing they'd be hard to cut into
Fruit juice: An invitation to diabetes?
Morbid thoughts? Have a cookie
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-20-2006 @ 9:16AM
Laura said...
Amen sister! I do the same things too. This article has given me inspiration to use one of my fancy marinades this evening. Your blog post was hilarious as well, it brought a chuckle out of me on this idle Tuesday morning.
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6-20-2006 @ 4:21PM
Baron said...
There is just such a bottle of homemade salsa from back home sitting in my fridge as well as some of my mom's watermelon rind preserves that have gone bad (surely!) because I was waiting for just the right time.
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6-20-2006 @ 7:38PM
Michael said...
If it's really good, eat it right away. This week we got the first potato harvest from our gardens. Most greengrocers here in the Netherlands don't even sell this special variety because they need to be eaten very quickly after harvest. Simply delicious either baked or cooked.
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