Food Waste Friday: A Pantry Item.
Well, I have a first since I started participating in Food Waste Friday. A pantry item!
Remember that spicy cornbread I kept mentioning? Well, I went to make it earlier this week. I was reading through Baking Illustrated and they mentioned that cornmeal can spoil rather quickly. Not good, considering I could not for the life of me remember how old my cornmeal was.
I poured some into the sink and examined it. It seemed fine. So I started measuring out ingredients. I poured a cup of cornmeal into my mixing bowl and… ick! There was a meal worm in my mixing bowl. Gross!
So the whole box of cornmeal went into the garbage. I suppose I could’ve looked into composting it, but it didn’t cross my mind at that point. Unfortunately, I also wasted the flour that I had already poured into the mixing bowl and the two tablespoons of butter I had melted for use in the recipe.
Oh well, lesson learned. I have to start keeping a better eye on my pantry as well!
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Oh, I just hate it when a bad ingredient in the bowl ruins everything you’ve already put in! I didn’t know that about cornmeal. I should probably go check ours.
Cornmeal is one of the things I buy in bulk rather than packaged – small amounts at a time. Probably a legacy from years as a military wife living in odd places. Reminds me of a book about Mamie Eisenhower when she lived in some tropical area and finally gave up and just strained things like sugar! Yech!
Oh, I hate when that happens! When we lived in the south I kept my cornmeal and flours in the freezer. I was going to say that I haven’t had cornmeal go bad since moving to the desert, but I am going to go check and make sure…:-)