I hate it when I lose any kind of food products, whether they are forgotten in the back of the fridge, hidden beneath a couple new rolls of parchment paper in the bread drawer or pushed to the back of the cabinet behind several boxes of cereal. In the best-case scenario, they are old and stale when I find them and, in the worst, they are truly "icky." Alanna, from A Veggie Venture experienced neither situation when she came upon a 10-month old loaf of Wonder Bread that had been long since lost in the depths of her bread drawer. It didn't have a speck of mold on it and smelled fine, with no indication that it might be past its prime. Based on this unintentional experiment, Alanna concluded that Wonder Bread "is truly-truly dead and lifeless cardboard."

I wasn't buying Wonder Bread before and I doubt I'll be changing my shopping habits any time soon. Unless, of course, I'm shopping to replenish my emergency disaster kit and want foods with a really long shelf lift.

It started with a relatively simple question: how do you improve a breadbox? The answer is that you add a UV lighting system that suppresses the growth of mold, extending the shelf-life of a loaf of bread. This is a particularly neat feature if you by preservative-free loaves of sandwich bread that seem to go bad in only two days.

Installing the light into a reflective, brushed-steel breadbox was a relatively simple matter once you have all the necessary equipment (and if you like building things). But the moment of truth came when the modified breadbox was tested against an unmodified box. The breads in the non-UV box molded in 2 weeks; the UV breads did not mold (though they did eventually dry up after several weeks, by which point you should have eaten the bread). Success!

Total cost of the project: $65. Never having to throw away another half-uneaten loaf that turned moldy: priceless.

[via SciFi Tech]

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.