Eating the best food in your fridge doesn’t mean the rest should go to waste.

“Always drink your best beer,” says my buddy Chad Harder. “That way you will always be drinking your best beer.”

This mantra is as close to religion as Harder may ever get. And its wisdom is available to all, including non-beer drinkers like myself, whose fridge is not teeming with different types of beer to choose from every time I get thirsty. But as a wine drinker I have faced similar calculations deciding which bottle to drink, and Harder’s motto takes all of the stress and guesswork out of that ordeal. Don’t overthink it. Drink your best stuff. Always. That’s it. The same logic applies to most other foodstuffs. And elsewhere in life – you can take it as far as you wish.

No matter where you apply it – in the kitchen, dining room, or any other stage – you should go for that crème de la crème. That way you always will be enjoying nothing but the crème.

A restaurant doesn’t have this luxury. In that insane business, success often hinges on using food before it rots.

But at home, we’ve no need to eat our worst food first. We can and should focus on the absolute best of the fridge. If that means some other produce goes south, so be it. If you can, recover it in some fashion – such as by putting carrots, celery, onions and other suitable vegetables into stock, or baking those wrinkled cherries that got pushed aside by the golden raspberries.

I know this because all last week I had both whole milk and heavy cream in the fridge. Which do you think I put in my coffee? That’s right, folks. Always drink your best cream.

That gallon of milk ended up in a cooler when we took a camping trip by the river. But since we forgot ice, the clock was ticking on that poor gallon of milk, and everything else in the cooler for that matter.

My old milk made it through the night, and was fine in my morning coffee. After breakfast I heated the milk and added the juice of a lemon I’d brought with me. The acid curdled the milk. I added salt to the curds in order to preserve them, strained them in a dish rag, and then twisted the rag to squeeze out the water. This process is the first step in making most types of cheese. I took the salted curds home and crumbled it upon a batch of couscous that I made with the freshest vegetables I had on hand: purple bell peppers, cherry tomatoes and zucchini. In the recipe below I don’t salt the cheese – I find it easier to add more salt, if necessary, than to remove it if I’ve added too much.

So, that is the recipe I’ll be leaving you with. Along with a reminder to drink your best beer, always.