I believe this comment, a reply to the blog post from two days ago (see below or click here), is worth publishing as a standalone post. So, from the desk of Nik Pinski, formerly employed in a middle management position with the KGB, I present…
Welcome to Western Civilization.
“Back in Soviet Russia”, (I love writing sentences that start with that. It automatically catches everyone’s attention and makes whatever follows it seem automatically cool and profound. Like – WOW this guy is gonna bring us unique and kooky experiences from behind the Iron Curtain. You know – that place where things do you, and you have to dodge giant tetris blocks falling on you – tossed from the sky by the Party Leadership. Where you own everything and nothing at the exact same time. The land of beatiful paradoxes. And it’s usually true. But I clearly digress.)
Back in Soviet Russia, if any food gets WITHIN a month of the expiry date, it’s time to toss it no matter how little food you got. Starvation is a painful thing but what’s the use of eating anything if you’re gonna just throw it all up anyway and get salmonella to boot. This applies to everything. Eat things as fresh as possible, and cook the shit out of everything else. When I came to Canada for the first time, I always ate steak WELL DONE. My parents still do. They want it burnt to a crisp. It took me almost a decade to go all the way down to Blue Rare, and now I know just how delicious animal blood really is. Russia has changed in many ways but if I was a betting man, I’d still put money down that unless you buy food at ridiculously over-priced stores catering to the new Russian oil billionaires, you STILL need to be more careful with food than you would be with radioactive plutonium rods.
Not so in the West. A day overdue? A Month? Even a YEAR (i’ve eaten food that past overdue). MOST of the time you’ll be just fine. Expired food is a-okay. It’s an excellent feature of living in democratic capitalism. They should put it in the brochure.
-Nik Pinski
