Goat Cheesiness

I eat out way too much. I'm figuring this out sadly and slowly, as each time I check my bank account the numbers are counting themselves down. So, a remedy: bringing my own lunch to work. This isn't actually a bad idea. Spending four days down near Fisherman's Warf doesn't really give me many cheap eating options. And, the novelty of a clam chowder bread bowl vanishes after one's first childhood visit to San Francisco.

So, today, I brought my lunch, contained among the plastic walls of Gladware and carried in a brown paper bag. Classy.

It was penne pasta with pesto and chunks of Riccota goat cheese, another one of my things-in-the-fridge-I-need-to-eat-before-more-mold-spreads creations. And I'm serious about the mold spreading. I bought this Riccota weeks ago, hoping to make a pasta salad with it. It wasn't your regular Riccota. This one had the consistency of fresh mozarella since the cheese had been drained to remove more moisture than usual. And it smelled of goat, as Manoella informed me. I never made the pasta salad and the cheese sat in the refrigerator, forgotten about for weeks. When I found it earlier this week, it was no longer a creamy white, but an almost white with spots of red and brown. It couldn't be good, but isn't all cheese mold anyhow? I figured that cutting off the discolored parts would make the rest edible. Plus, I've got a strong stomach--I was willing to test it out.

The pesto was a few weeks old too. It was leftover from these little pesto and tomato toasts that Manoella and I made several weeks back. Could pesto go bad? Could it mold? If it could, I couldn't tell. Green on green is hard to discern.

So, these two got tossed together with some penne. The pesto was surprising still good and fresh (still tasting of basil, garlic, and parmesan) and the Ricotta seemed fine. The texture of the cheese changed with a little bit of heat. The small white chunks reminded me of marshmallows with a goat scent. The pasta was a bit oilier than I would have liked though, but not bad for a leftovers thrown together. I just had to make sure there were no green pesto chunks stuck between my teeth though. All clean.