x2. I've seen so many "articles" on yahoo saying not to freeze cheese, but I have a freezer full of shredded or crumble-able cheese, and for cooking purposes it works fine (not so great on a salad though). Certainly better than buying a large bag and then tossing it out.
I’ve never seen anything saying not to freeze cheese.
As a matter of fact, last time I got a 2-pack of big bags at Costco, I could swear it said “Use or freeze by: x date”
I was raised by a single mom with very little money.
• If there was mold on the crust of the bread (day-old to start with...) we cut off the crust. Mold on the sliced surface, toss those slices— but look at the rest to see if there’s some that’s not moldy.
• Pre-shredded cheese wasn’t a thing... But we only shredded what we needed, and if the block of cheese had mold on it, you cut the mold off, and ate the rest. Or cut it into smaller chunks or slices to freeze so it wouldn’t mold again before it could be eaten.
• Milk that didn’t smell or taste quite as fresh as it once did, but wasn’t full on spoiled, was frozen in ice cube trays, to be used in cooking, like Mac & Cheese, etc. Of course, that was only when we had real milk... most of the time it was powdered.
•. My mom also used a wooden cutting board, and flipped it over— one side for meat, the other for vegetable/bread/etc. She would wipe it with the same sponge she used for dishes, the counter, spills on the floor, etc. and then rinse it and the sponge under scalding hot water, and leave them to air dry. We never had food poisoning... rarely had any kind of tummy troubles at all.
• Raw eggs as well as hard-boiled ones were kept at room temp.
Personally, I think in many ways, we’re worse off now, with the food safety rules than we were 50-60+ yrs ago. I believe we never got sick, because we were essentially inoculated with minute amounts of whatever bacteria/pathogens were in the cutting board, sponge & whatnot. Over time, our immunity was built to these pathogens & we didn’t get sick.
How can you explain the fact that my grandmother never, ever refrigerated her butter (it lived in the cupboard)? We used margarine, but it lived in the cupboard, too. She would also fry chicken at lunch time, and pile it in a tea-towel lined basket, and any that remained, got covered by the ends of the towel, and stayed on the table all day. Until piece by piece it was eaten. If any was left, & she remembered, she’d put it in the icebox before she went to bed. But just as often, it was still on the table, & grandpa would wrap a piece or two in a hanky, and take it in his big, black lunchbox, along with a few biscuits or a hunk of cornbread, and head off to work.
