Talked to my neighbor about her 3 week old leftovers and it got weird

Last Saturday I was hauling trash bags out and my neighbor Linda stopped me. She saw me tossing a whole container of pasta salad and just shook her head. She said she keeps things like that for 3 weeks easy, just scrapes off the top layer if it looks fuzzy. I told her that's how you end up with food poisoning and she laughed, said she's never been sick in 40 years. That conversation stuck with me because I am the opposite, I throw stuff out after 2 days even if it smells fine. So now I'm wondering, is there a middle ground here? Does anyone else have a hard line on how long cooked pasta or rice actually lasts in the back of the fridge, or am I just wasting too much good food?

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ninamartin15d ago

The fuzzy top layer on pasta isn't just mold you scrape off, that stuff sends roots through the whole container. Rice is worse, it can give you nasty food poisoning even when it looks totally fine, so 3 weeks is playing with fire.