The previous course built the paperwork: four lists, one folder, a calendar of what expires. This one is what the paperwork is measuring. It is the course the whole library has been pointing at every time a topic said "the food safety course covers this", and it starts where the food does — at the back door, with a delivery on a trolley and somebody signing for it.
🚚 What happens at the back door
A delivery is the only moment when food you did not handle becomes food you are responsible for, and it is the cheapest place in the whole chain to catch a problem — because you can still refuse it.
Four things get looked at, and they take about a minute between them:
- Temperature of anything chilled or frozen, measured rather than felt. A box that is cold to the hand can still be well outside its range, and "it felt fine" is not something you can write on a log.
- The packaging. Torn, wet, swollen, leaking or refrozen — ice crystals inside a frozen bag mean it thawed somewhere and went back, and you have no idea for how long.
- Dates. Not just present but sensible: a product delivered with two days left on it is a product you are going to throw away.
- The vehicle and the driver, if you can see them. Raw meat stacked above produce in the van is the same mistake as in your fridge, made by somebody else, and it has already happened by the time it reaches you.
Anything that fails goes back. This is the part people find hardest, and it is worth being blunt: accepting a doubtful delivery because refusing it is awkward transfers the whole problem to your kitchen, where it becomes yours and costs more.
🧊 The order things go on the shelf
Inside the fridge there is one rule that matters more than all the others, and it is about height rather than temperature: nothing raw sits above anything that will not be cooked again.
The reason is gravity. Everything else in a fridge is opinion; drips are physics. Raw poultry on a top shelf will eventually leak onto whatever is beneath it, and if what is beneath it is a tray of salad leaves, the fridge has just done the one thing it was there to prevent.
That gives the order from the top down: ready-to-eat food first, then whole cuts, then minced and ground meat, then poultry at the bottom. The table below carries the shelf position for each product along with how long it actually keeps.
| Product | Shelf position | Refrigerator 32-40 °F | Freezer 0 °F or below | Pantry (room temp) |
| Ready-to-Eat Foods | Middle | Varies by product | 6-12 months | — |
| Poultry (chicken, turkey) | Middle | 1-2 days | 6-9 months | — |
| Red Meat (beef, pork) | Lower | 3-5 days | 4-12 months | — |
| Seafood (fish, shrimp, crab) | Lower | 1-2 days | 3-8 months | — |
| Vegetarian Proteins (tofu) | Upper | 1-2 weeks | 3-5 months | — |
| Milk and Milk Products (milk, cream) | Lower | 5-7 days after opening | 1-2 months | — |
| Cheeses (mozzarella, cheddar, parmesan) | Upper | generally 2-4 weeks | 6 months | — |
| Butter and Margarine | Upper | 1-2 weeks | 9-12 months | — |
| Yogurts and Fermented Products | Upper | 1-2 weeks | 1-2 months | — |
| Leafy Vegetables (lettuce, spinach) | Upper | 3-7 days | 8-12 months | — |
| Root Vegetables (carrots, potatoes) | Lower | — | — | 2-4 weeks |
| Cruciferous Vegetables (broccoli) | Upper | 1-2 weeks | — | — |
| Allium Vegetables (onions, garlic) | Lower | — | — | 3-5 weeks |
| Bell and Hot Peppers | Upper | 1-2 weeks | — | — |
| Mushrooms and Fungi | Middle | 7-10 days | — | — |
| Tomatoes and Tomato Products (tomato sauce) | Upper, for fresh tomatoes | 5-7 days for fresh and opened sauce | 3-4 months | Fresh 1 week; unopened sauce 12-18 months |
| Grains (rice, wheat flour) | Lower | — | — | 6-12 months |
| Breads and Bakery Products (sandwich bread, baguette) | Upper | — | — | 5-7 days |
| Pasta and Noodles | Lower | — | — | 12-24 months |
| Tortillas and Flatbreads | Upper | — | — | 1 week |
| Common Herbs (oregano, basil) | Upper | — | — | 6-12 months |
| Common Spices (cumin, coriander, chili powder, paprika, ginger, turmeric) | Lower | — | — | 6-12 months |
| Salt and Pepper | Lower | — | — | Indefinite |
| Oils (olive, vegetable, canola) | Lower | — | — | 6-12 months |
| Sauces and Condiments (soy sauce, mayonnaise, mustard, hot sauce, vinegar) | Upper | Refrigerate after opening | — | 6-12 months unopened |
| Sweeteners (sugar) | Lower | — | — | Indefinite |
| Eggs and Egg Products | Middle | 3-5 weeks | — | — |
| Legumes (beans) | Lower | — | — | 12-24 months |
| Citrus Fruits (lemons, limes) | Upper | 2-3 weeks | — | 3-5 days |
| Avocados and Similar Fruits | Upper | 1 week once ripe | — | 1-2 days |
| Baking Ingredients (yeast, baking powder, baking soda) | Lower | — | — | 6-12 months |
Two things about this table are worth saying out loud. The blanks are not omissions — they mean that product does not belong in that kind of storage. And the ranges are for product in good condition, stored properly from the start; nothing on this table repairs a delivery that arrived warm.
🌡 Measuring it, and the log that proves it
A fridge that has never been measured is a fridge you are hoping about. The thermometer inside it is not enough on its own either: it reads the air near itself, not the food, and the door has been opened forty times since it last settled.
So the reading that counts is taken at the worst moment rather than the calmest — mid-service, after the doors have been working — and it is written down. That is what the log below is for. It saves in your browser and exports to CSV; who signs it, how often, and where the sheet ends up is the previous course's business.
| Date | Time | Location | Temperature (°F) | Initials |
The pattern matters more than any single reading. One warm entry is an event; the same unit warm every Thursday afternoon is a fault, and you will only ever see it written down.
📅 Dating, rotation and the thing at the back
Everything that comes out of its original packaging gets a label with what it is and the date, and everything gets used oldest first. That is the whole system, and it fails for one predictable reason: putting new stock in front of old is faster, and nobody is watching at eleven at night.
The check is physical rather than administrative. Once a week, somebody takes things out of the back of each shelf and looks. What is at the back is what the rotation missed, and if there is something back there nobody recognises, the labelling is not working either.
The next topic moves from the food to the people handling it — which is where the largest single cause of trouble in a small kitchen lives, and the one that is hardest to fix with a rule.