Every Sunday night, my sister Dana meal-preps for the entire week.<\/p>\n
Her favorite lunch is tuna salad, so she makes a huge container with tuna, mayonnaise, celery, pickles, onions, and chopped hard-boiled eggs.<\/p>\n
Then she eats from the same batch Monday through Friday.<\/p>\n
Sometimes even Saturday.<\/p>\n
I never did.<\/p>\n
By Wednesday or Thursday, I was already suspicious.<\/p>\n
One afternoon, she offered me a sandwich and I asked when she had made it.<\/p>\n
\u201cSunday,\u201d she said casually.<\/p>\n
It was Friday.<\/p>\n
I put the sandwich down.<\/p>\n
Dana laughed.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s refrigerated. It\u2019s fine.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said she had been doing it for years and had never gotten sick.<\/p>\n
Still, I wanted to know the actual recommendation, so I checked food-safety guidance.<\/p>\n
Prepared tuna salad is generally best kept refrigerated for only about 3 to 4 days<\/strong>.<\/p>\n That surprised her.<\/p>\n The bigger issue is that you can\u2019t always tell whether food is unsafe just by smelling it or looking at it.<\/p>\n Once tuna is mixed with other perishable ingredients, especially eggs or mayonnaise-based dressing, keeping it cold matters\u2014but refrigeration doesn\u2019t make it last forever.<\/p>\n Dana looked at her container.<\/p>\n Then at me.<\/p>\n Then back at the container.<\/p>\n \u201cSo Friday tuna is probably not my best idea?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cProbably not.\u201d<\/p>\n She threw the rest away.<\/p>\n Now she makes two smaller batches each week instead of one enormous one.<\/p>\n And every time she offers me tuna salad, she tells me exactly what day she made it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Every Sunday night, my sister Dana meal-preps for the entire week. Her favorite lunch is tuna salad, so she makes a huge container with tuna, mayonnaise, celery, pickles, onions, and chopped hard-boiled eggs. Then she eats from the same batch Monday through Friday. Sometimes even Saturday. I never did. By Wednesday or Thursday, I was …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9632,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9631"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9633,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9631\/revisions\/9633"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}