Teresa Santoski

One of the most common questions throughout history may just be “Is this food safe to eat?” For millennia, kings, nobles and government officials have employed food tasters to make sure of that.

The food taster’s job is to taste the food prepared for their employer before their employer eats it. If the food has been poisoned by a would-be usurper or an enemy of the state, the food taster will die or at least become ill, thus alerting their employer to the danger and saving their life.

Food tasters are still used in some circumstances today, but for the general public, that position has largely morphed into that of the designated sniffer. Every family has one. This person does not necessarily have an exceptional sense of smell – it’s just better than that of the other family members.

Most of us are more concerned about accidental poisoning from ignoring expiration dates than intentional poisoning from a frangipane tart laced with cyanide. As a result, the designated sniffer is constantly being asked, “Does this smell bad? Do you think it’s still okay to eat?” while having questionable food shoved under their nose.

I have the dubious privilege of being the designated sniffer in our family, and my skills are usually requested while Mom and Dad are cleaning out the refrigerator in anticipation of going to the transfer station. Mom’s sense of smell has never been great, so she likes to have my input before she decides to throw away an expired food item.

The fact that food expires is both stressful and sad. No one wants to throw away food. Not only is it a waste of the food itself, but it’s also a waste of the money you spent on it. You might as well just empty your wallet over the trash can.

For most of us, the issue isn’t that we’re buying more food than we need and throwing out the extra. It’s that we seem to have a slightly more forgiving offshoot of the Bermuda Triangle in our kitchen.

A bag of fresh bagels disappears into the depths of the breadbasket, and when it next surfaces, the bagels have developed mold spots. A container of hummus vanishes into the dark recesses of the refrigerator, and when it finally finds its way to the front again, that expiration date is looking rather dicey.

It’s an easy decision to toss out those moldy bagels, but food that’s past its expiration date – or sell-by date or use-by date – requires a little more research. Is it a hard and fast rule that you only have three to five days to eat that lunchmeat after you buy it at the deli? And what about that open jar of spaghetti sauce in the fridge?

That’s where the designated sniffer comes in.

I have sniffed many cheeses and a lot of lunchmeats, and my olfactory assessment has prolonged the shelf life of a fair few. Deli turkey, however, is my Achilles’ heel. It doesn’t smell right to me to begin with, so it’s hard for me to tell when it’s turned. I may have therefore contributed to the premature disposal of more turkey than was actually merited – which is a shame, since it’s Mom’s favorite.

Chips are one of the less obvious candidates for use-by date reevaluation. Our family’s position used to be that they don’t necessarily expire as much as they go stale. Even then, if it’s something like a tortilla chip, you might be able to render them crunchy again by spreading them out on a tray and crisping them up in the oven.

I will never forget the day I found out how wrong we were about chips not expiring. I’m not sure how long that open bag of tortilla chips had been in the pantry, but the taste of that rancid half-chip I was fortunate enough to spit out is permanently seared into my memory.

Because sometimes it’s not enough to sniff the food item in question. You have to take the plunge and try a little bit of it. And maybe you’re still not convinced, so you have to have someone else try it and agree with you that it doesn’t taste right.

I certainly didn’t need any confirmation that those tortilla chips had crossed over to the dark side, but Mom has encouraged me to sample questionable food and beverages on multiple occasions, usually prefacing her offer with, “This tastes terrible! You have to try it.”

It puts me in mind of that GEICO commercial where three raccoons are eating out of a garbage can, and one raccoon encourages one of the others to try something he found in the trash, telling him, “You’ve got to try it. It’s terrible.” He further describes its awfulness by saying, “It’s like mango chutney and burnt hair.”

Thankfully, nothing Mom has offered me has tasted like mango chutney and burnt hair – yet -but some things have tasted unpleasant enough that we disposed of them immediately, expired or not.

Being your family’s designated sniffer can be a wild ride. Though it’s highly unlikely to prove deadly, as has been the case for some of the less fortunate food tasters, you will smell – and taste – things you won’t easily forget.

But it’s all for the greater good of the family’s grocery budget. And who knows? If your family saves enough money due to your assistance in preserving food that hasn’t quite expired yet, maybe they’ll buy you a gift as a thank you. Like a nice, scented candle, or a selective memory wipe.

Tete-a-tete is published monthly. Teresa Santoski can be reached at tsantoski@gmail.com or via www.teresasantoski.com.