Useless Father Bought Xmas Meat Today (Tues 19th)

[Smerk]

Just want a sanity check here. We're hosting Xmas for 10 adults and 2 small children (as usual). My dad's one contribution to this is ordering the meat from his local butcher for me or him to collect close to Christmas.

After chasing him up for a week asking if he'd managed to order the beef joint and pigs in blankets, he finally confirms today that be has bought it all and it's currently sitting in his fridge.

When I expressed concern that it's not going to last until next Tuesday, he replied:
"The butcher said it'll be fine. The pigs were frozen and my fridge is cold."

I thought that you had 24 hours to eat something that was defrosted. I also thought that meat was good in the fridge for only 3-4 days. I am very concerned that if we wake up on Xmas Day and it's turned, we're absolutely fucked. I'm also worried that we're going to make my elderly in-laws and breastfeeding SIL sick.

We can't refreeze the pigs if they've already been frozen. I don't particularly want to eat a frozen joint, but maybe I should tell him to stick it in his freezer and I'll buy a replacement of everything. Money is not an issue but the waste makes me sick.

AIBU to rebuy all the Christmas meat?

I think people are telling you off because you use the word “ useless” in your title. Take that word away and it changes everything. Maybe there is more of a back story to all this?

She calls him useless in her subsequent posts too. She sounds totally neurotic and unkind tbh.

Personally I wouldn’t risk it, and for everyone saying don’t waste it it’s more likely to waste leaving it in the fridge then realising tuesday it’s gone green! Cook and eat it now, replace for Tuesday. You can’t be too careful with food safety.

You can be too careful, that’s why 9.5 million tons of food is thrown away every year. There’s no way a joint of beef will go off in a week.

Call the butcher and check, you don't want to take risks when your sister in law is breastfeeding

Surely it'll have date on.

Let's start by saying I think ur rude bless ur dad, ur useless by asking a bunch of strangers something that a quick Google search or phone to a butchers could of answered ur question! Beef will be fine....go buy ur own blankets. #begrateful that ONE contribution is more than enough

I don't think you're being unreasonable to be worried at all.

Myself, I've had a lifetime of trying to do nice things the way I like them, making huge amounts of effort so I can relax and enjoy them and then having them derailed at the last minute by someone thoughtless, selfish or lazy from my family who will then also get angry at me for being upset by what they've done. I get it. I am also, generally, a very tolerant and forgiving person but not with my family any more because they use that to harm me one way or another. People who've known mostly loving, supportive, caring family will always chime in to criticise other people who haven't for just being honest about their different experiences and it's unfair.

As far as the practicalities of the meat goes, you'll "probably* be fine but you've had a lot of good advice about how to make that less of a gamble already. And why should it be a gamble?! It's perfectly reasonable to want to reduce the risk for yourself and your relatives as much as possible and I would really appreciate that if I was at your table. Modern food standards are better in a lot of ways which can give us a false sense of security but it's food poisoning from meat is a legitimate concern, particularly with processed meat as it's harder to tell from smell/look/feel if it's OK. Present day processing chemicals are strong and mask a lot, bacteria constantly evolve to subvert the measures we take to kill them off. I guess I'm basically saying that common sense is somewhere in the middle and a little caution is certainly warranted.

Again, if I was eating at your table, and especially if I was one of the vulnerable people who can't afford to be ill, I would think it was really considerate of you to think about this, whatever you decide.

Breastfeeding doesn’t make you ‘vulnerable’ 🤦🏻‍♀️

I’d be worried about the beef going brown rather than food poisoning from that and the slightly. So I’d have just put the beef in the freezer, cooked the pigs then frozen them. Sorted, peace of mind.

Enjoy Christmas 😊

I am pretty sure the beef would be okay - unwrapped and covered loosely in the fridge. I probably wouldn't bother about the pigs in blankets either, but would check the use-by date before making a decision and cook them if necessary, but bear in mind that if you freeze an item you add 3 months to the use-by date, i.e. you can keep it for 3 months. Mind, I am taking a leg of lamb out of the freezer on Sunday night to cook on Tuesday. It was bought for Easter but not used. I have no qualms about doing this whatsoever.

Everything the breastfeeding mother eats goes through her milk to her infant. So if you get sozzled your baby will get sozzled too, for example, and if you get food poisoning so will your baby. Mind, the beef will be fine, it can stay in the fridge covered loosely with no problem. If really worried freeze it.

Bollocks. Breastfeeding is good for the immune systems of babies.

Just in the bf side- I work for the infant feeding team. It’s highly unlikely baby would get food poisoning from bf- but! It’s still bad for mum to get it as the dehydration from the d and v would mean she wouldn’t produce much milk and would add to her already weakens state. I have bf through a d and v bug and it’s absolutely the pits!