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Funky Eggs Have Gotta Go

Laura Crooks Food Editor

Go ahead, take a peek in your refrigerator. If, like mine, there’s still a stash of hard-boiled Easter eggs in there, get rid of them.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service, hard-boiled eggs should be kept for only one week.

And, if you turned some of those eggs into a delicious, creamy egg salad, you should consider dumping it down the disposal five days after sticking it in the fridge.

Now don’t panic if you ate one of those eggs this morning, that keep-it-a-week recommendation is set for “best quality.”

Elaine Mayes, Spokane county extension agent, says the bigger safety question is how the eggs were handled in decorating and hiding.

Eggs shouldn’t be out of the refrigerator for more than two hours. And they should be handled the least as possible and kept clean, since the eggshell is porous. That means if you hid the eggs in the grass or flower garden or let the kids roll them down the driveway to crack them, it isn’t the best idea to eat them.

For more information about food safety and storage, call the USDA’s Meat and Poultry Hotline at (800) 535-4555 between 7 a.m. and 1 p.m. (Pacific time), or use your touch-tone phone to hear food safety recordings 24 hours a day. Or, visit the Web site: www.fsis.usda.gov/OA/pubs/focus_ ref.htm#Chart.

Save the fish

So you love to eat all kinds of fish and seafood but somewhere, deep down inside, you feel guilty about contributing to the depletion of some endangered populations. The April-May issue of Time magazine features a list of environmentally good and bad fish and seafood choices to eat.

The best choices: Dungeness crab, Alaska halibut, Mahi-mahi, Alaskan wild-caught salmon, tilapia and striped bass.

The bad choices: Atlantic cod, orange roughy, Chilean sea bass, shark, shrimp and swordfish.

For more information, check out the Web site: www.montereybayaquarium.org

Charity cookbooks

Nonprofit organizations are encouraged to submit cookbooks that they’ve created for fund-raising purposes to the TABASCO Community Cookbook Awards competition.

Prizes range from $100 to $3,500 for the charitable organization.

To enter, submit five copies of the cookbook published in 1999 or 2000, a complete entry form and documentation of how the money raised from the cookbook was used.

For entry forms, send a a self-addressed, stamped envelope to: TABASCO Community Cookbook Awards, c/o McIlhenny Company, Attn: Sheryl Dartez, General Delivery, Avery Island, LA 70513. Entries must be submitted by Oct. 1.