I'll have the grilled cheese with a side of mold

Dear Tricia, Where does mold come from? Why is it in my fridge? Am I okay if I eat only the non-moldy half of a piece of cheese?


Hey, heard any good mold jokes lately? Yeah, neither have I.
Friends, the word of the day is mold! Every time you say or hear the word, you have to scream. Ready??
Mold *AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!* is teeny tiny microscopic fungi that floats around in the air and loves to have babies with other mold *AHHHHHHHHHHH!* spores. (With a name like Fungi, how could you not be a baby-making-magnet?) It loves 2 things in its fungi world: moisture and reproducing, so it basically has the same interests as a Mormon. Its in your refrigerator because there’s plenty of moisture and plenty of other mold. *AHHHHHHHHHH!* The only way to get rid of it is to take everything out of the fridge, unplug it, and scrub it out with baking soda or vinegar. Don’t use commercial cleaners because you don’t want your food around those fumes, unless you're a fan of Lysol-flavored dinner.
Don’t worry about eating the non-moldy *AHHHHHHHHHHH!* half of a piece of cheese: unless you’re hypersensitive and allergic to mold *AHHHHHHHHHHH!*, you’ll be just fine. Any kind of mold *AHHHHHHHHHHH* that is visible to the eye won’t harm you; it’s the bacteria that you can’t see, like staph or salmonella, that are harmful. Just to be sure, I checked out the Mayo Clinic website, and they said that hard and semi-soft cheeses are fine to eat even if they've molded. *AHHHHHHHHHH!* If it's a soft cheese like ricotta, cottage cheese, or brie, they do recommend throwing it away, although I can't necessarily trust their judgment when they also recommended throwing away blue cheese: a cheese that is naturally covered in mold *AHHHHHHHHHHHH!* to begin with. Plus, Mayo probably doesn't understand what its like to be on a budget. So scrape it off and enjoy your grilled cheese. And clean out that fridge. It's seriously starting to gross me out.