This time, I'm not talking about the fuzzy white blobs flowering on the wooden furniture (I'm either cleaning those off, or cheerfully ignoring them for the time being). No. This time I'm complaining about the contents of my kitchen cupboards.
I just took out a packet of par-baked bread rolls to put in the oven for my lunch. Par-baked rolls are cheap in Germany, cheaper than buying fresh rolls (and don't even think about sandwich loaf here - it's inedible). These packets of par-baked rolls usually keep well, but I've just found, in a packet with a month left before its expiry date, that every roll was covered with blue-green mould blobs. The packet was sealed, only purchased a couple of days ago... and very, very mouldy.
This isn't the first time I've opened a sealed packet of food, to find the contents green/blue/grey and fuzzy. The worst culprit is desiccated coconut... bleurgh!
Somehow, bugs seem to colonise sealed packets of food, as well. Ground hazelnuts are a particular favourite of these sneaky creatures.
I don't know how it happens (especially the bug problem), but it drives me nuts when I want to prepare food and it turns out that my unopened, within-date ingredients have to be turfed out, and I can't make the recipe I was planning. I always thought sealed packets were good protection against bugs, although I know by now that nothing stops mould! (And leaving a packet of, say, tea leaves, open in the cupboard is just an invitation to disaster. Don't do it. You have only yourself to blame, which is no comfort when you're throwing out that mass of tea-leaf shaped mould squiggles.)
My only tip is... don't keep a store cupboard full of useful plastic-packaged ingredients, even if the packet is sealed and the expiry date is sometime next year. Try to buy these ingredients only as you need them, because things that you might expect to keep well, won't necessarily do so.
For a distraction from mould (I know I need one), I've posted a YouTube player at the bottom of the page (under the posts), displaying some videos of south Wales, which mostly relate to places I visited in March 2008. I've also posted a slide show of some of my own photos. Related blog posts to follow soon!
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