waste

After a full week with no power, I've been dumping the contents of our refrigerator and freezer into the trash. I hate how wasteful it is, but some of the food is clearly gone and some of it has just been at 85 degrees for too long to want to risk food poisoning. I've been putting the contents of all the recyclable containers down the garbage disposal, which has ranged from gag-inducing to surprisingly inoffensive. A quick review of how our food withstood the heat, from worst to best:

• Ricotta cheese (granted, it had expired before we lost power) - horribly gag-inducing, I had to wrap a shirt around my face in order to handle getting it down the disposal.
• Greek yogurt - nearly as bad as the ricotta, i think they both grew the same sort of mold.
• Orange juice - smelled pretty funky, had turned a different color.
• Milk in small boxes in the freezer for times when one runs out of milk while cooking - some seemed fine, some had separated into curds and whey. All down the drain.
• Regular milk - smelled a little funny, but not bad. Not even lumpy!
• Homemade potato-leek soup - definitely smelled a little off.
  
• Gorgonzola cheese - looked a little mushier, but otherwise fine. I guess it's largely mold already.
• Salsa - smelled fine, looked a little different color. It seems like something that would need to be refrigerated.
• Indian chutney relish stuff - see salsa above.
• Queso - separated a little into cheesy and watery but otherwise okay, got rid of it because it was gross in the first place.
• Hummus - seemed perfectly fine, disposed of it due to potential for lenticular mold.
• Miracle whip - seemed completely fine, disposed of due to egg content.
• Mudslide mix - disposed of due to milk content, seemed absolutely fine.
• Lingonberries - looked fine, probably were fine due to being jam-item, disposed for being last 1/16 of jar.
• Pasta sauce - wins, because I cannot open the jar.
  

P.S. I threw out everything in the freezer, only to find I had a renegade popsicle in a red flavor that had managed to leak out of its packaging as it melted. The bottom of the freezer looked like a murder had been comitted and took about half an hour to clean out.