Leaving cooked food out of the fridge.

[gentlegreen]

All my online research says this is a bad thing and my daily bathroom experience is consistently "interesting".

When I first went veggie in 1981, I very quickly acquired a wok, plus a pressure cooker for grain.
I would routinely add yesterday's leftovers to fresh ... I probably kept it in the fridge overnight.

At present I have no fridge and after a run of bad luck have given up on microwaves which were very handy for cooking up fresh veggies on a daily basis.

For several years now I have lived on "perpetual" veggie stew.

I start a batch with miso, dried kelp and shiitake, garlic, red onion.
I add a kilo of chopped carrots, then 500g of sprouts in winter .. the rest of the year I wait and add a head of broccoli ...then half a kilo of mushrooms and a red pepper ...then a can of chopped tomatoes and a can of beans.

After taking what I need, I replace the lid on the pressure cooker and it gets left at room temp for 24 hours.

I add a head of broccoli every other day, same with cans of beans and tomatoes, sometimes a can of soup.
At some point I decide to finish it and start a new batch.

Doubtless not ideal from a nutrient point of view compared with my old microwave technique, but I currently also eat large amounts of lightly pickled veggies ...

But what about microbiology ?

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

Do you pressure cook it before each serving?

If so your probably killing more microbes than what are on fresh stuff.

Plus perpetual stews are not unheard of.

Perpetual stew - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[gentlegreen]

Do you pressure cook it before each serving?

If so your probably killing more microbes than what are on fresh stuff.

Plus perpetual stews are not unheard of.

Perpetual stew - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

To be honest it rarely gets up to pressure, but it's always boiling when I reheat.
I used to add bags of microwave rice when it got a bit soupy, but I stopped doing that for caloric reasons...

I see this all got covered before .. my main reason for thinking about it was that now I eat no fortified foods I was thinking of adding B12 to it rather than having to remember to pop a pill now and again.
It's working brilliantly for weightloss...

20 hour room temperature Lasagne - Eat or bin?

A Lasagne was made last night (contains some beef) but we ate less than half of it. I put the remainder back in the oven (switched off), intending to put it in the fridge before bedtime. Obviously this didn't happen. It's been in the oven, uncovered in a Pyrex dish for over 20 hours now at...

www.urban75.net

 

[nottsgirl]

Would Sir consider the use of a recipe?

 

[gentlegreen]

Would Sir consider the use of a recipe?

Only if it required zero effort
I basically select all the ingredients I like in the first two aisles at Aldi and chuck 'em in a pot...

 

[neonwilderness]

For several years now I have lived on "perpetual" veggie stew.

I add a head of broccoli every other day, same with cans of beans and tomatoes, sometimes a can of soup.

Trigger's stew

Cooking your food

How to cook your food to prevent food poisoning.

www.food.gov.uk

You'd be better off making a batch and chilling it, then reheating a portion when you want some. But if you don't have a fridge then reheating it will probably kill off most bacteria (and most nutrients). Sitting at ambient temperature all day isn't ideal though

 

[moomoo]

How are you not dead already?

 

[Saul Goodman]

How are you not dead already?

Because his food contains enough penicillin to cure the plague.

 

[Riklet]

To preserve fullest nutritional value you should always put food into tupperware and fridge/freezer as soon as it's cooled down.

You can always heat it up in whatever way again from there. Leaving it out for days is unlikely to kill you etc but the food will ferment, break down, lose nutritional qualities etc. Also if you are reheating the whole pan of food every time it's wasteful. Better to finish dishes and start again definitely.

My parents do this with casseroles (ok not as bad as you) and it's weird and crazy but whatchugonnado. As you are so concerned about your bodily fluids and health etc currently it might be worth following basic food hygiene for a few months and changing things up a bit. I would also recommend eating much more basic food for a month or two to see if that helps - no miso or kelp etc which is hugely full of iodine. Get some b12 flakes on every meal. Small portion of brown rice with each main meal at least. IMO you think you have a great diet but you clearly don't.

And get a new fridge. Seriously. It's summer and 30 degrees for days on end at the moment.

 

[gentlegreen]

To preserve fullest nutritional value you should always put food into tupperware and fridge/freezer as soon as it's cooled down.

You can always heat it up in whatever way again from there. Leaving it out for days is unlikely to kill you etc but the food will ferment, break down, lose nutritional qualities etc. Also if you are reheating the whole pan of food every time it's wasteful. Better to finish dishes and start again definitely.

My parents do this with casseroles (ok not as bad as you) and it's weird and crazy but whatchugonnado. As you are so concerned about your bodily fluids and health etc currently it might be worth following basic food hygiene for a few months and changing things up a bit. I would also recommend eating much more basic food for a month or two to see if that helps - no miso or kelp etc which is hugely full of iodine. Get some b12 flakes on every meal. Small portion of brown rice with each main meal at least. IMO you think you have a great diet but you clearly don't.

And get a new fridge. Seriously. It's summer and 30 degrees for days on end at the moment.

I was actually thinking of upping my game and start to add B-fortified yeast flakes at various points ...
Since I'm on a caloric deficit, I was alternating multivit and vit C at the start of the year ...
I don't drink juice or eat much fruit so I was wondering if I needed more vitamin C as I tend to rely on greens ...
OK, after a few days, things are getting into school over-boiled veggies territory, but I add fresh greens and I eat as many Polish jarred "salads" as I do cooked veggies.

The grain part of my protein is breakfast W/M toast and I prefer to get the rest of my carbs from beans later in the day - low-GI
My diet is working brilliantly for losing weight. I'm eating for someone weighing 50 kilos, but feeling full. When I was eating grains in the evening I easily managed to be obese on a vegan diet - though there were often potatoes too ...

Since I'm stiill here for a couple of years or so, I will probably relent and get some use out of the camping fridge .. if I had a functioning microwave the decision would be more straightforward - maybe I'll get one next time Aldi have them - it's a bit of a pain waiting for a whole pot to heat up on a 1500 watt hob...

Day 1 of course the veggies are optimal.
day 2 - reheat
day 3 - add a head of broccoli, can of tomatoes, can of beans ...sometimes a pepper, sometimes more mushrooms ..
day 4 - reheat
day 5 another load of ingredients
day 6 reheat

I tend to start a new batch when there are no carrots left ...

 

[Riklet]

No comment to just how minging and unhealthy 7 day old food is. All that bacteria is probably why youre pissing all the time. Just get a microwave on amazon/freecycle today and order a fridge for this week too. Come on you're retired treat yourself to yknow.... the basics.

Jesus christ man youve not been well. Give yourself a break. Follow a diet online from a vegan nutritionist or something, or talk to one locally for a few months. Sure it's good to lose weight but not at the expense of your health etc.

What about an organic vegbox of seasonal veggies or sthing as youre in that there Bristol with such things available? You dont need to take supplements to get vitamin C etc but b12 flakes probs a good idea if you dont eat anything fortified or oat/soy milk etc.

 

[gentlegreen]

Just get a microwave on amazon/freecycle today and order a fridge for this week too. Come on you're retired treat yourself to yknow.... the basics.

Jesus christ man youve not been well. Give yourself a break. Follow a diet online from a vegan nutritionist or something. Sure it's good to lose weight but not at the expense of your health etc.

I'm in the process of emptying my house so I can fix the place up and move.
The camping fridge will be fine.

I tend to follow Michael Greger's "daily dozen" - though I don't go in for berries and have not jumped on the turmeric bandwagon ...
I'm probably eating between 10 and 20 portions of veggies a day - and I bet that much school cabbage would be pretty healthy.
Probably before the end of the year I may want to add a few hundred calories of something as my BMI was about 23 at my fittest - at which point I will probably aim to make up for my low omega 3 intake ...

I probably ought to do some research about the kelp I'm eating - my biggest worry is that it has B12-confounding compounds - I don't use that much - I don't add salt to my cooking, and I don't know if my polish pickles use iodised salt ...

I'm not exercising enough, but I reckon on balance I'm the healthiest I've been for decades - certainly based on my weight and bloodwork ...

 

[prunus]

All my online research says this is a bad thing and my daily bathroom experience is consistently "interesting".

When I first went veggie in 1981, I very quickly acquired a wok, plus a pressure cooker for grain.
I would routinely add yesterday's leftovers to fresh ... I probably kept it in the fridge overnight.

At present I have no fridge and after a run of bad luck have given up on microwaves which were very handy for cooking up fresh veggies on a daily basis.

For several years now I have lived on "perpetual" veggie stew.

I start a batch with miso, dried kelp and shiitake, garlic, red onion.
I add a kilo of chopped carrots, then 500g of sprouts in winter .. the rest of the year I wait and add a head of broccoli ...then half a kilo of mushrooms and a red pepper ...then a can of chopped tomatoes and a can of beans.

After taking what I need, I replace the lid on the pressure cooker and it gets left at room temp for 24 hours.

I add a head of broccoli every other day, same with cans of beans and tomatoes, sometimes a can of soup.
At some point I decide to finish it and start a new batch.

Doubtless not ideal from a nutrient point of view compared with my old microwave technique, but I currently also eat large amounts of lightly pickled veggies ...

But what about microbiology ?

If reheating suitably then the chances of pathogens giving you trouble in this scenario is low, especially if you start afresh every week or two. Various spore-forming clostridiums will likely survive the process, but their toxic byproducts will be rapidly denatured by the heat. Ditto E. coli, the other main nasty. Viruses stand no chance. Some Staph (eg S. aureus) species are remarkably heat-resistant, as are their toxins, but are unlikely to be able to compete in the general mix. They may be able to slowly increase their populations over repeated heat-cool cycles that kill of their competitors, hence ideally it restarts every couple of weeks.

Alternatively if you can pressure cook to 15+ psi for 30 minutes minimum (autoclave standard) periodically this will pretty much sterilise the lot and you can go on as you wish.

 

[Mrs Miggins]

I just wonder how much enjoyment you get out of this perpetual stew and whether enjoying food is even something that interests you.

 

[gentlegreen]

I just wonder how much enjoyment you get out of this perpetual stew and whether enjoying food is even something that interests you.

I grew up in 60s / 70s suburbia where food was mostly white and brown and veggies were mostly frozen peas and tinned tomatoes.
I went vegan for largely ethical reasons 40 years ago and a major side effect of that was discovering whole grains. beans and veggies.
I have developed a taste for nutrient-rich food - and when I ate "recreationally" it didn't end well - and not just during my pesce-lacto-ovo 40s when my BMI hit 34 and my cholesterol went up to over 6 ...

Recreational food for me has tended to be carbs and sugar and it took a brush with diabetes for me to learn about fructose ...

I'm eating the way I would eat even if I was a millionaire who no longer had to cook.

 

[Saul Goodman]

I just wonder how much enjoyment you get out of this perpetual stew and whether enjoying food is even something that interests you.

I personally can't see how anybody could enjoy that diet, but then I'd say the same about any vegan diet. Maybe its a cultural thing. It certainly sounds like there could be cultures present in GGs stew.

 

[moomoo]

I grew up in 60s / 70s suburbia where food was mostly white and brown and veggies were mostly frozen peas and tinned tomatoes.
I went vegan for largely ethical reasons 40 years ago and a major side effect of that was discovering whole grains. beans and veggies.
I have developed a taste for nutrient-rich food - and when I ate "recreationally" it didn't end well - and not just during my pesce-lacto-ovo 40s when my BMI hit 34 and my cholesterol went up to over 6 ...

Recreational food for me has tended to be carbs and sugar and it took a brush with diabetes for me to learn about fructose ...

I'm eating the way I would eat even if I was a millionaire who no longer had to cook.

Your chef would weep.

It’s possible to eat healthy food that’s also delicious you know?

 

[gentlegreen]

Your chef would weep.

It’s possible to eat healthy food that’s also delicious you know?

I bet I drink better coffee than you do
And I bake my own breakfast bread because I can't buy it the way I like it
And I buy a particular yeast extract that so far as I know only one other Urbanite uses.

Breakfast certainly won't ever change - though if I ever got really serious about my health, doubtless it would be a green smoothie and / or something involving brown rice and veggies...

 

[nogojones]

I reckon GG's stew is probably pretty wholesome and tasty, and though it does change a bit from day to day, I'd likely get bored of it every evening and want to try something different now and again

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

The idea of just eating the same stew day after day… I’d go mad. Each to their own, but isn’t enjoying a variety of meals, tastes and textures one of life’s simple joys? You seem to have reduced eating down to a series of numbers on a spreadsheet.

 

[Supine]

Your diet is disgusting, unhealthy and potentially dangerous. Well done.

 

[prunus]

Your diet is disgusting, unhealthy and potentially dangerous. Well done.

I don’t think it’s particularly unhealthy, and although potentially dangerous no more potentially dangerous than most other diets that involve reheating food - it always has to be done properly.
As for the first epithet, I’d have to reserve judgement until I’d tried it…

 

[The39thStep]

I bet I drink better coffee than you do
And I bake my own breakfast bread because I can't buy it the way I like it
And I buy a particular yeast extract that so far as I know only one other Urbanite uses.

Breakfast certainly won't ever change - though if I ever got really serious about my health, doubtless it would be a green smoothie and / or something involving brown rice and veggies...

What’s the yeast extract ? Vegemite ?

 

[Saul Goodman]

Your diet is disgusting, unhealthy and potentially dangerous. Well done.

So is mine, but at least it's tasty.

 

[gentlegreen]

What’s the yeast extract ? Vegemite ?

 

[gentlegreen]

I reckon GG's stew is probably pretty wholesome and tasty, and though it does change a bit from day to day, I'd likely get bored of it every evening and want to try something different now and again

I use a variety of condiments...

 

[existentialist]

These are still one of my favourite kitchen item buys:



In some ways, my lifestyle isn't a million miles from gentlegreen's - I live alone, cook most of my own food, am vegetarian (though sometimes erring towards vegan). I batch-cook, but I guess that's where our paths diverge. The first appliance I got into my flat was a fridge/freezer (second-hand) from a bloke who made his living giving cows haircuts, so my 2kg batches of food get frozen down into 250g "Lego bricks".

Occasionally (and definitely before I got my Lego brick moulds), I'd attempt to work through a batch without freezing it, but almost inevitably ended up having to throw some away when mould would begin to form. I'm aware that moulds which aren't lurid colours aren't likely to do me harm, but feh - my red line is not wanting to eat mould.

Your approach is obviously not doing you any harm, gentlegreen, but I think I'd struggle to prepare food knowing it was liable to have been something of a petri dish for the past <mumble> days. Also, I quite like entertaining (well, back in the Before Times, anyway), and I would be mortified to feed a guest food that might cause them digestive upset that I might be more immune to. Were I in your shoes, I think I'd be getting a fridge/freezer from Freecycle or similar, even if it was a purely temporary arrangement pending my departure to climes foreign.

But I'm well aware that I'm coming at this from a very different angle to yours.

I do, however, share your view that bacteria aren't something to automatically go "eek" and run away from - there really are relatively few that are going to cause any problems, and 99% of those are likely to do no worse than give you the squits for a day or two. I think that we are, in general, excessively hygienic about food prep, although we all (clearly) draw our lines in different places, and I am sure that there are people who'd find my approach to domestic hygiene, if only because I don't bleach everything to oblivion every 2 days, and cut the mould off my cheese and still eat it (the cheese, not the mould), quite scary or even out of order.

 

[Elpenor]

I would imagine gentlegreen has acclimatised themselves to any risk of food poisoning over time.

While I’m sure it’s not inedible I don’t think I’d want to eat it every day. I guess they don’t host many dinner parties - not that I’ve ever done either.

 

[gentlegreen]

On a global scale. how much variety is there in the average diet ?
I watch a fair bit of info on the topic - from esoteric Japanese epicureans harvesting "mountain vegetables" which they generally eat with plain white rice - to the irony of the "SAD" ("standard American diet")
I haven't ruled out experimentation later on, but after many years when my eating made me sick, I'm establishing a baseline.

 

[l'Otters]

Your diet is disgusting,

Totally subjective

No one’s asking you to eat it yourself. Your taste is irrelevant.