Octopus Overlords

Why do thousands of katydids sing to me at night trying to get me to mate with them? Our children would be really ugly.

I weep for the future.

OK, but what does Helen Keller have to do with dancing? "Talk with your hips?" This 3oh!3 dude was reaching, seriously.

I gather that kids don't tell Helen Keller jokes anymore.

So I'm off to Google to find out how long cooked chicken keeps. You see, I've started eating salads every day and shopping for produce and preparing produce into a salad every day is a great big pain in my born again salad eater ass. So I like to make a weeks worth of salads on Sunday and the lettuce seems to hold pretty well until Friday. Only this week I bought one of those $5 rotisserie chickens and cut it up and put it into my week long salad. As it turns out, the five dollar rotisserie chicken isn't really the way save money when making a salad. I thought that I'd have enough chicken there for five salads and still be able to make sandwiches with some of the meat. Nope. I can squeak out little pieces of poultry for five salads that's about it. Even worse, I eat the whole chicken skin while cutting up those fractions of flakes foul fragments. I'm sure that is great for my health and weight. But that's neither here nor there anymore. The important thing here, though is that I can pick up entire chicken breasts for cheaper than a buck apiece.

But I digress. So, I'm off to Google to find out how long cooked chicken keeps and have found out that fixins for a frickassee from a five dollar chicken won't keep five fricken days but rather only four, which is to say that if I buy my squab sized chicken on Sunday and expect to keep serving it until Friday, I am fooked. I'm thinking about pushing the boundries this week and I already have daily servings from forthwith until Friday flocked in the fridge.

Ahem, So, I'm flying off to Google to figure out how long cooked chicken keeps and find out that if I go to Google and let it assume what I am typing it will assume that when I type:

"how long does "

the rest of my question assumes that I am pot head, a drunk, or trying to make sure that I'm not pregnant. Go Internet!

At least it doesn't assume that I am into underage Asian boys.

The colder your fridge, and the tighter the seal on your chicken, the longer it will keep. The internet can't tell you if food is still good or not. Food that is cooked completely, stored in a sub 40 degree fridge, in a ziploc bag with most of the air removed, and is kept that way, can be perfectly edible for over a week. Problems arise when you take the bag of chicken out on Monday to make your salad, and let it warm up for 30 min before putting it back in the fridge. If you do this every day, by Friday, you're a prime candidate for food poisoning.

Leftover restaurant food is different. It typically sits out much longer and isn't in an airtight container (unless you move it into one). I give that about 2 days in it's original container. Maybe a week in my own container.

I'd not hesitate to eat 1-week old homemade leftovers. 2-weeks is too old. In-between, it must pass the look and sniff tests.

I eat "too old" leftovers quite often without harm, but if you're very concerned, freeze one or two portions of your cooked chicken and take it out to thaw before making your salad.

Although you shouldn't re-freeze thawed raw meat, it's ok to freeze it again after cooking.

it must pass the look and sniff tests.

In the food science industry, this is meaningless. Organisms that make food look unappetizing to eat or impart funny tastes or odors are rarely human pathogens. In some cases you're better off eating food that has this type of bacterial or fungal growth because they out-compete human pathogens.

Regarding leftover chicken...

Depending on the organism you're talking about, the infectious dose will vary. Salmonella species might require less than 20 organisms whereas something like Campylobacter might require a few hundred. Depending on how the food is cooked and then handled after it is entirely possible to maintain an infectious does on your food. Non-commercial refrigerators (like the kind you'd find in your kitchen) aren't designed to take hot foods and cool them down to safe levels (below 41 degrees F) in the recommended time - they're designed to keep food that's already cold, cold.

So while your hot food is moving through what we in the biz call "The Danger Zone", bacteria are continuing to multiply and grow. It's only when the food is sufficiently cooled that the bacterial growth stops or slows to the point of being insignificant.

And there are even some psychrophilic bacteria and fungi (they prefer cold temperatures) that would normally be out-competed by the mesophilic human pathogens growing on the food. For food, the biggest psychrophile of concern is Listeria, which is absolutely a human pathogen. It's capable of growth in temperatures as low as 39 degrees F.

Bon Appetit!

silverjon wrote:I eat "too old" leftovers quite often without harm, but if you're very concerned, freeze one or two portions of your cooked chicken and take it out to thaw before making your salad.

Although you shouldn't re-freeze thawed raw meat, it's ok to freeze it again after cooking.

I'm the same way about "expired" food, while my wife is just the opposite. We have three open jars of salsa in the fridge because she opens one, takes out half a cup, and then won't eat it again. It's made of vinegar. Salsa will keep until the apocalypse. But since I never eat the stuff and she won't, I eventually cave in and throw away all the barely-skimmed jars.

I was going to post silverjon's freezer advice. You can also put the frozen chicken on top of your salad before you leave for work, and it will be thawed by lunchtime (assuming that you're shredding it or cutting into small strips).

I think I have found a beautiful young woman who likes manboobs.

Dammit...and now your wife has to have her killed.

Thanks a lot!

I've been fighting a Campylobacter colony in my gut for the past month. You DO NOT WANT!

The new faucet control in our companies kitchen maintains the same water pressure but it changes the way the water pits out and it doesn't blast clean my mug nearly so well. If we had an HR department, I'd go complain.

I've noticed that sales people like to include pictures of themselves in their letters. I wonder what the reaction would be around me if adorned my cube walls with pictures of all the pretty sales girls from their letters. For that matter, I wonder what the reaction would be if I adorned my cube walls with pictures of all the ugly dudes.

It's probably a good thing I rarely act on my thoughts.

Do you think it's possible to mentally change your laugh and have that new laugh become your real reflexive laugh? I want a laugh like an effeminate psychopath. Like you'd expect from Vincent Price or Liberace or Paul Lynde or the that guy who used to say "yeess" who ended retiring to do McDonald commercials for the Monopoly game in the mid 80's. Or maybe a Renfeld sort of huntchbacked laugh where you just go "HEH HEH HEH HEH" really loud and really slow.

LordMortis wrote:I've noticed that sales people like to include pictures of themselves in their letters. I wonder what the reaction would be around me if adorned my cube walls with pictures of all the pretty sales girls from their letters. For that matter, I wonder what the reaction would be if I adorned my cube walls with pictures of all the ugly dudes.

It's probably a good thing I rarely act on my thoughts.

Or better yet, pick one sales girl you know is visiting soon, and just post all of her letters on your wall

What do you think would have happened to Bob Dylan if he couldn't write music or play guitar. I'm betting he would have been homeless.

Mr Bubbles wrote:What do you think would have happened to Bob Dylan if he couldn't write music or play guitar. I'm betting he would have been homeless.

Drug overdose in an alley.

As a born and breed Californian I am always surprised by people who say they don't drive.... Holy Carp... Seriously... I couldn't do jack if I was not driving. I mean that thought causes anxiety attacks in me. An alternate Universe where the laws on nature are warped into a steam of anxiety producing realities. My car, my lover, my friend, my life. I'd never leave you baby. Never.

Mr Bubbles wrote:As a born and breed Californian I am always surprised by people who say they don't drive.... Holy Carp... Seriously... I couldn't do jack if I was not driving. I mean that thought causes anxiety attacks in me. An alternate Universe where the laws on nature are warped into a steam of anxiety producing realities. My car, my lover, my friend, my life. I'd never leave you baby. Never.

Growing up in Michigan I felt the same way. We started practicing driving when we were 14-15. We took the test and got our licenses the instant we turned 16, and all but the poorest kids got a beater car of their own. Becoming a driver was an enormous rite of passage...a huge step toward independence.

Out of the 6 teenaged and early-20s Michigan kids that I know now, only one has a drivers license. The others seem inclined to let their parents drive them around forever. And the parents seem inclined to do it.

Now I live in a city with decent public transportation. I went 10 years without a car of my own, and I only put about 2500 miles a year on my car now. I could get by without it if I had to.

You would if you'd had a Volkswagen Rabbit/Diesel. 0-60 in ...........................never! It wouldn't go that fast if it fell off a cliff!

Chris Farley ?

ZBrush 3.5 is amazing - been in since 2, so this is like my 3rd free upgrade...Go Pixologic!! Now you can sculpt directly on armatures (sp?), and they've added a bunch of (bewildering) planar brushes for doing hard surfaces (robots, armour vs the normal squishy organic stuff). Actually been away for a week, and last night instead of playing Champions, I spent the evening watching tutorial videos and messing around with ZB.

(Though this guy showed everyone up and made a cool "Desert Storm" Batman with armour before he even got 3.5!)

A Childhood picture of me at age 3.

You know what profession really gets spit upon in the movies? Animal control. They only get used in kids movies and they're always the evil bad guys trying to capture the cute animal protagonists. Suxxors for them.

Malificent wrote:You know what profession really gets spit upon in the movies? Animal control. They only get used in kids movies and they're always the evil bad guys trying to capture the cute animal protagonists. Suxxors for them.

They were really cool in one of those Babes in Toyland/Chitty Chitty Bang Bang type of movies they used to play when we were growing up. Where they Ice Cream man had the "You must pay the rent" twirly mustache and rounded up children with hooks and nets.

Why don't they make children's movies like that anymore? If you plopped modern children in front of them would they be bored by them and demand CGI special effects?

Bob Probert was a much better player when he was doing drugs. My buddies and I had a theory that he would not snort before the game so that he would be really ansy to kick the crap out of a couple of guys and get the boot so he could get back to his coke quicker.

Taking an Adobe Pro training class today.

The instructor is really hot.

Must...stop...staring....at boobs.

Bakhtosh wrote:Taking an Adobe Pro training class today.

The instructor is really hot.

Must...stop...staring....at boobs.

Ouch, yah - OK, now NSFW

Why do we like boobs so much? Why can't we turn that off?

Yeah...glad there was no one sitting behind me when I refreshed the page...

LordMortis wrote:Why do we like boobs so much? Why can't we turn that off?

mammals

The google-fu is strong today.

I just figured out who she reminds me of: Stacey Dash - The actress who played Dionne in "Clueless".

El Pollo Loco's Spicy Buffalo wings really suck. Salty and very unsatisfying. I want my money back.. blech.

Bakhtosh wrote:The google-fu is strong today.

Wow, did you just google and then share pics of your Adobe Pro instructor?

I'm beginning to get that Halloween bug going. I don't think I can wait much longer to trim my beard and start experimenting with hair grease and mustache wax... Maybe I'll stop at a salon today. Do they sell mustache wax at salons?

Hopefully cool weather is just about here. The trees are starting.

Then we need foggy mornings.

What isn't good is that I'm trying to save money... and lose weight... Having the uncontrollable urge to go out and play like a kid all of the time is contrary to saving money and losing weight.

When people put things on their public Facebook pages, they want everyone to know, right?

Every time I see the word "salon" writen on a building/sign/window, I instantly ache for it to really say "saloon"