My wife likes a little cream in her coffee. Like about 1/2 a tsp per day. Which means the cream spoils long before she uses up a carton.
This is not an earth-shaking problem and cream is cheap enough to pitch a buck’s worth every 2 weeks without pain, but it offends my cheap-ass nature to do it. Not to mention loudly triggering the “never waste food!” tapes emplanted in my head by my Depression-era parents lo those many years ago.
The facts as I know them:
Cream is sold in 1 pint conventional fold-to-open / fold-to-close waxed cardboard “milk cartons”, or in 1-and-a-half pint cartons with the new-fangled screw top embedded in one side. We’re talking real whipping cream here: no artificial stuff, “low fat”, or preservatives allowed.
The screw top kind seem to stay fresh longer, but in either case the carton is barely half used up before the cream gets too old & curdles when it hits the hot coffee.
Does anyone have an idea for a container I could put the cream in which would retard spoilage? Because the screw top kind does last significantly longer, I’m surmising that exposure to air in the fridge is the main thing which speeds spoilage. So how to minimize that?
Or the issue may be the small amount of cream which sticks in the folding spout, dries out, and becomes a breeding ground for bacteria who then colonize the body of cream in the bottom when you pour past the dried stuff each time. Who knows?
I much prefer the side spout, which eliminates not only the crusty crud, but keeps you from touching the spout every time you open it. As to freshness, you got me there, unless you freeze some of it. The carton should last a week or more, though. Perhaps use some in your scrambled eggs to up the usage? The problem with freezing high-fat dairy is that it can be a pain to recombine when thawed. Vigorous shaking might or might not work, although it works fine for non-fat.
Does your grocery store carry raw dairy products? Good raw cream lasts much longer than pasteurized. Dairy is a lovely medium for the growth of bacteria; pasteurization effectively wipes the slate clean for the bad bugs to come on in and set up camp. Having the live, healthy cultures out-competing any of the bad keeps it fresh for quite a long time.
How about those little single-serving tubs of creamer? Most are artificial non-dairy products (like Coffee-Mate), but the Staples website also has Land O Lakes Mini Moos, which is half and half. The packets don’t need to be refrigerated and the website has a case of 180 units for $15.99, which comes to about $0.09 for each serving.
I vote for this - I have a home office, and a melitta 1:1 pod brewer living on the corner of my desk, and love the mini moos because I dont have to schlep my gimp ass out to the kitchen to refill my coffee=) and being allergic to coconut[palm/tropical] oils makes it pretty much impossible for me to use nondairy powdered moo, and being diabetic I cant use the presweetened/flavored fake moo either. Win/win situation.
Also, not sure if she is watching what she eats, but it is preportioned as well. Again, a win/win situation in that case as well.
Hmm, I use half and half every day in my coffee and I’m always surprised at how the expiration date is a good 4-6 weeks from when I buy the cream. If I buy a pint, it is gone long before the expiration date, YMMV.
I’d go to Target or somewhere like that and find a small jar or plastic container - the smallest size you can find that 1) seals completely and 2) will hold however much cream you want to “save”. Heck, an old jam jar would work if you can find one the right size with a tight top.
When you buy cream, pour however much of it into the jar/container you bought. Seal it, stick it in the back of the fridge. The key here is to minimize the exposure to air and open fridge doors.
I think it’ll last a while that way. For what it’s worth, it takes a LONG time for cream to sour. But it does get “chunky” and will curdle when added to coffee if it’s too old.
I would say you should up the fat content of your cream or buy smaller packages or do both. You can sometimes find half-and-half in half pint containers. If you switch to whipping cream I can almost always find it in half pint containers. The slightly trashy supermarket (which happens to be the closer one) only ever has big containers. The fancier supermarket always has small containers.
I usually buy whipping cream in the 1/2 pint size and it lasts for weeks. Even though you use less of it in the coffee I still finish the container well before the stuff goes bad.
If she’s really using heavy whipping cream, you might consider switching to light cream (not half-and-half, unless she doesn’t mind it. I hate the stuff, personally). Light cream has a much longer shelf life than whipping cream IME, without a significant difference in taste.
Why not make creme fraiché with the leftovers? delicious in soups, baked potatoes, pancakes (the batter, not the finished pancake, although I suppose you could put it on a pancake for a more savory breakfast then the typical sweet version, maybe with some fresh herbs, crumbled bacon and jack cheese, or you could stick with the sweet option, because the sour of creme fraiché goes well with sweet fruit … although, now I am rambling…) or anything else you might use sour cream for.
I buy organic dairy products which seem to have not only a much better flavor, but an added bonus of a longer fridge life. I don’t bother with organic anything else, but I won’t buy anything other from the dairy case.
Can cream be frozen? If so, pour the desired amount into each compartment of an ice cube tray, freeze, then pop out into a plastic container or zip-loc. Take a cube each morning, plunk it into the coffee. That’ll cool the coffee down to drinkable temp even faster than from the fridge. Of course I’m guessing on the palatability and temperature differential there, as I take my caffeine cold and carbonated.
I’m surprised that more people don’t do what my mother and I do – we have a couple small Tupperware liquid containers handy for exactly this sort of thing. (Probably not real tupperware, but it’s got the pouring lid handy and is small)
I’m mildly lactose intolerant so that good goosh of cow juice into my coffee is pretty much the only milk I get straight up.