Cutting mold off cheese and eating the rest might be okay, but if you find a moldy spot on bread, you should throw the whole thing away.
Twinkies and other “fun cakes” are of course immune to mold or any other organic manifestations.
Mr. Rilch is Miss Muffet when it comes to expiration dates. Especially eggs: every time I’m going to use an egg, if he’s around, I get “How old are those eggs? Are they the same ones you used on Sunday? Oh great; why don’t you just inject me with salmonella?” I keep telling him that eggs don’t go bad in three days, and there’s about a week’s leeway if you’re going to use them to bake. I was told this, back in 1984 when some of my classmates got salmonella from tainted Jewel Market milk. (None of them died.) Baking temperatures kill off the salmonella virus, so if the eggs are otherwise okay, they’re all right to bake with. But he just keeps saying, "Sal-mo-nel-la…You eat it yourself then; I’m not having any!
I never look at dates on the eggs. We keep them loose in the refrigerator door, so it’s kind of pointless to try to keep track. I just put them in a bowl of water. Floating, bad. Sinking, good.
I use the smell/slime test for fresh meat, chicken and pork will usually get slightly tacky but still smell fine about 2 days before they are bad.
Anything with obvious growths or weird smells goes immediately, except cheese. I will cut off the bad parts and eat the rest.
I had an odd experience with that last night though, I was looking for parmesan and found a block of reggiano in the back of the fridge. I tried grating it and it had the consistency of a Tonka truck. After a little research and questioning my roommate, we determined that this cheese was probably purchased by my previous roommate, well over a year ago. It didn’t smell bad, or have any mold or odd colorings, but it had petrified and all of the oils seemed to have vacated. It really did feel like a smooth plastic toy. Odd.
I just happened to try a box of Macaroni & Cheese that was 2 years out of date, from the far back of the pantry.
The result was a mess that was cocoa brown instead of orange!
I wasted a little of butter and milk in the process, plus my time, so I’ll think twice before doing something like that again.