Diet Chef past sell by date

[Spooky]

I really recommend that you DON'T eat the meat. Saying that cooking at high temperatures is an answer - I disagree love, as look at me - sick all night and my food was cooked at high temp for 45 mins, so it meant diddly squat! But risking food poisoning, salmonella etc etc upon yourself is totally another.

Another way of looking at it is .. imagine the scenario of going to the supermarket and buying loads of meat for say a barbecue so lots of chicken breasts, sausages, chops, etc etc and when arriving home you put the bags on the worktop only to be greeted by an emergency phone call saying you have to be whizzed off somewhere IMMEDIATELY, so off you go .... 5 days later when you come back home you are greeted with all your goodies still in their carriers on the worktop. Would you still think ooh BBQ time? or "crikey I forgot these, and they've been out of the fridge/freezer for days". If your gut instinct is the latter then follow it and please dispose of your defrosted spoils.

I am really sorry and so feel for your situation (being out of work and struggling personally) so I genuinely understand, but honestly you could be putting yourself at risk. In this situation I wouldn't even cook the meat up to give my doggie, for fear of making him "ruff" lol, so I certainly wouldn't do it for me.

Its obviously up to you, best wishes xxx

 

[pudnpie]

Strato - please bin the food. It's just not worth getting sick over. You could end up very poorly.

How long had some of the stuff been in there anyway? Was it stuff you bought frozen? Things you freeze yourself deteriorate quicker.

Sent from my HTC Sensation Z710e using Tapatalk 2

 

[Sazza]

Oh dear, this has given me serious food for thought (no pun intended).

I came home 2 days ago after 5 days away to find that my power had tripped out, and everything in the freezer had thawed out, with a pool of water on the floor of melted ice from inside it.

My quandary is, there is about £300 worth of food inside it, which has now refrozen. It is only 1/2 insured, and my insurers have said that if I claim for it my premium will go up.

I can't afford to throw away £300 of food, but don't want to be ill either.

I've decided to be "sensible" and only eat some of the food, particularly those that can be thoroughly cooked, so will throw away items like cream and cooked meat eg sliced beef, chicken and ham for sandwiches.

Yesterday I ate some well-boiled green beans and a packet of microwave curry chicken with rice, but threw away the rice as I've heard that heating it does NOT destroy a bug specific to rice. Instead of heating the curry in the microwave, I boiled it in a saucepan for 10 minutes.

I seem to have survived this so far. I expect you will tell me to ditch it all, but do you have any alternative advice?

You really should bin all the food, the only items you can refreeze are bread and cakes! Not only should you not refreeze items it has not been kept cool since it defrosted. Our fridge/freezer broke down through the night a few nights ago and we binned most items, only items kept were some steaks that were still frozen solid, anything else had to go, thankfully freezer wasn't very full. Even most of the things in the fridge had to go and it was rather full so we lost a fair amount but items had got warm through the night just so not worth risking so for yours to have been 4 days stratobuddy, really very risky!!!

You might be as well claiming on your insurance, depending what excess is as you have now enquired about claiming, this goes against you even if you don't go ahead with the claim and your premium is liable to be affected anyway.

 

[stratobuddy]

UPDATE ON FREEZER - - - Katie and I just made a list of all the contents to see what is salvageable (some things are eg cheese, butter, bread that don't need to be frozen in the first place).

I found one mysterious sealed bag (I use a bag sealer to reseal opened packets). It was too iced up to see what was inside.

Eventually it thawed out - - - - -


It turned out to be a bag of RUBBISH that was obviously meant for my wheelie bin!!!! To keep my bin clean, I put messy rubbish into plastic bags and seal them.


I think that I absentmindedly sealed up some food to go into the freezer, and at the same time sealed up some rubbish to go into the bin and then mixed the two bags up.

So I am now wondering what frozen food I threw away, and how long ago it was!

 

[janie]

strato - please chuck it out, rather than chuck it up! ditto anything in your fridge. it's not just the thaw/refreeze thing, it's the fact it was at room temperature for 4 days! as susie said, no amount of cooking will get rid of bacterial toxins. you may have noticed some fresh foods that you'd think would be ok to freeze have 'not suitable for freezing' on them - that's because they've been frozen before. what poor spooky's had to endure is bad enough but depending on the bacteria involved, food poisoning can be very serious with long lasting effects.

i claimed for my freezer contents when my fridge freezer broke down (large fridge which was stuffed but not covered) and my premium went up but that's insurance for you, that's what happens. also, shop around online when it's time for renewal and chance are. you'll find a good deal anyway.

also, as sazza says, they hold it against you just if you enquire - i found that out when i lost my glasses. i couldn't see to read the small print so rang them to ask if the glasses were covered. when i said i would think about it bearing in mind the excess, they said it would go down as a claim anyway! i was dumbfounded and said but it hasn't cost you anything! they said that was the rules - an indication to them that you're 'accident prone'. i don't know if all insurance companies are the same in that respect but that was my experience.

hope you feel better spooky (((hugs)))

 

[stratobuddy]

Thanks for your advice.

I have now dumped loads of meat (chicken, pork, turkey, beef, sausages, etc)

Have read on t'interweb that bread should be OK to refreeze and also hard cheese, and I have already eaten these without any problems (I eat loads of cheese on toast and have at least 4Kg in the freezer, as well as more in the fridge).

I notice that lots of things that used to be known as PRESERVES such as pickles and jams and sauces are now supposed to be kept in the fridge after opening, which is ridiculous IMO.