Frugal Living » Ice Cream- Is it Fresh?

Ice Cream- Is it Fresh?

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Ice cream can be a delicious treat or an expensive tub of disappointment . . .
recently we had company and someone got the idea of making cream puff sundaes, while I certainly didn’t mind throwing together the cream puffs, I didn’t happen to have any ice cream on hand, nor did I feel like making it from scratch. So our eldest son headed to the store and came back with the requested flavor, the only problem- when we pulled off the top it had clearly thawed and been refrozen. Should we chance eating it, not knowing how long it had been thawed and potentially get food poisoning or say to heck with it and eat it anyway . . .

I opted to turn our batch of cream puffs into homemade eclairs by mixing up some homemade pudding mix I had in the pantry and skip the ice cream treat and returned the ice cream to the store it came from, explaining our concerns.

Had I taken 2 minutes to explain this simple trick I use, my son might not have purchased that tub of disappointment. The next time you purchase ice cream, press the top of the container with your thumb. If the top depresses, the ice cream has thawed at some point and been re-frozen. If the top is stiff and does not give, the ice cream is fresh and has not yet experienced a thaw.

ice-cream-is-it-fresh

Do you have any tips for checking for freshness BEFORE you leave the store?

© Can Stock Photo Inc. / dbvirago

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Melissa 'Liss' Burnell, Founder of Budget101

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Melissa "Liss" Burnell started Budget101.com in 2001 because she needed it to exist — not because she saw a market opportunity. She was feeding a family of four on under $200 a month, and people kept asking how, so she started writing everything down.

That turned into 25 years of recipes, debt-busting strategies, and DIY content — including figuring out how to make 128 loads of laundry detergent for less than $2. Millions of families have quietly used this site to stretch a dollar without feeling like they're sacrificing anything. She's also the author of two bestselling budget cooking ebooks, available on Amazon.

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1 thought on “Ice Cream- Is it Fresh?”

  1. your store bread has different color ties that wrap at the end…well each color specifies the day of the week the bread was ”made” so check the color of the”tie” before buying bread

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