"fridge" news and stories

We're becoming more and more aware of food safety, even in our own homes, and though we will never forget to scrub everything that has come into contact with fresh poultry and now, to wash all our produce, we should also remember that the safest way to thaw frozen meat is quickly. In other words, don't take out a couple of frozen T-bones in the morning and leave them on the counter all day.

According to Engadget, this Sharp refrigerator has a warming drawer that allows you to quickly thaw your frozen foods. However, we can't tell for sure because the original site is in Japanese. A few of the commenters on the Engadget post have tried to help with the translation, but if there's any one of our Slashfood readers who knows Japanese, let us know what we're missing!

Of course, if our interpretation of the what the fridge actually does is off, at least we were reminded to always quick-thaw our frozen meats!

Generally, to keep foods fresh longer, we wrap them up and place them in the refrigerator. Sometimes, we don't give much thought to how things should actually be stored or whether we're doing it properly. As a result, you are more likely to get food poisoning at home than when eating out at a restaurant where health codes are strictly enforced. Some of the biggest food safety violations have to do with the refrigerator, the catch-all of food storage. Here are a few tips to keep you, and your family, a little safer.

• The refrigerator should be kept at, or below, 40°F. Keep in mind that the temperature can rise when the door is opened frequently and if the fridge is overcrowded and air cannot circulate.
• Store raw meat that you won't be eating right away in the freezer, not the refrigerator. Defrost it in the fridge.
• Milk is good for about 10 days past its "sell-by" date, although if it is left out to warm up, it can go bad before that time. It is better to keep it in the main part of the refrigerator than on the door.
• Fruits and vegetables can be stored at the same temperature they are stored in the store, though cut produce should be refrigerated and eaten within a few days.
• Hard cheeses can be stored, wrapped, for several weeks. If mold develops, the affected area and about 1/2-inch around it should be removed; the rest is safe to eat. Do not eat soft cheeses or dairy products, including cream cheese and yogurt, that have molded.
• Fresh eggs will last at least 3 or 4 weeks in the fridge, but hard-cooked eggs will only last one week. You can always check your eggs for freshness if in doubt. Eggs blend better with other ingredients in recipes for baked goods and get more volume when beaten if they are held at room temperature for 20 or 30 minutes before using.

Earlier this week, Nicole posted about recipe searches using Google itself, or Cooking with Google. Along those same "help me with what's in my fridge," life-gives-you-lemons kind of lines comes Snacksby.com. Admittedly still in its infancy, Snacksby describes itself as "like MacGyver, but for food." A search for "chicken, cucumbers, corn," which is what's in my fridge now, returned "Don't really expect anything, we've only got like 3 recipes and 12 ingredients here right now anyway. You should totally add a recipe or an ingredient." That may be a bit of an understatement, and some of Snacksby's features-tag clouds, food photo sharing-could be a lot of fun if/when more people start to contribute to the site. It's definitely worth a look. 

In almost every refrigerator in every home, there is a package of old, mysterious food. It could be furry, smelly or have actually developed into a new life form by the time you find it and dispose of it. There is one place that contains food more frightening that the home refrigerator: the office refrigerator.

To say that this appliance is the black hole of food is inaccurate only in the fact that some of the food eventually resurfaces.

There are a variety of standard food items in office refrigerators. Most of them contain some form of creamer, often the non-dairy varieties, as well as variously dated cartons of milk. There are always a few jars with condiments like mustard, mayonnaise and jam. The number of condiments is directly proportional to the number of people who work in the office and have access to the fridge, so despite the fact that no one can recall ever adding anything themselves, a fridge in an office of 50 people will have a dozen bottles of salad dressing, a few jars of mayonnaise and at least 3 different mustards, in addition to pickles, soy sauce and ketchup - none of which anyone can find when they want to use it, of course, which leads to the addition of even more condiments.

Gorenje is already one of the leading European appliance manufacturers, but they are aiming to become the most innovative, as well. The company is releasing two lines of Swarovski crystal-encrusted refrigerator/freezers. The first is known as "the Eye-Catcher" and features 7,000 hand-embedded crystals in a high-gloss, black background. Only 10 of this model will be produced. For the slightly less outrageously inclined, the alternative to the Eye-Catcher is Gorenje's commercial line crystal fridge, which only has 3,500 crystals in a black and silver refrigerator/freezer.

Getting past their very unique look, the 2-meter high fridges are controlled with a touch screen mounted on the door, allowing the user to control settings and the appliance temperature very easily. From the same screen, users can access a built-in radio, recipe book and a voice memo recorder/player. Both models will be available exclusively at Harrod's, in England, later this month.

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