This morning Marty and I discovered something gross in a carton of soy milk:

Yeah. That’s what I said. The Flickr set is here.

When Marty called it to my attention, he said (truly horrible of him) that it looked like something’s trachea. When I finally got up the guts to take a look at it myself, it was gross, yes, but it struck me more as bean curd, and I know that’s what it probably is. However, I don’t know enough about soy milk production, or what can happen to soy milk when it goes bad, to know exactly what would have caused this, so I don’t know if it’s something that might signify unsafe soy milk. Does anyone know enough to reassure me about this?

Needless to say, we dumped the rest of the carton. I’d already consumed three quarters of it over the last week or so, and I obviously didn’t get sick over it—I thought it was fine. The date on the carton is September, no freaky taste or smell. But whether it’s bean curd or something else, it looks old and maybe moldy. We didn’t want to take our chances.

I know that you can make tofu out of soy milk, and I looked around for the soy milk / tofu recipes that have been floating around on the web lately. They confirmed my suspicion that it might be bean curd (or something like that), but they didn’t say anything that made me feel better about it having been in there. Should I notify Silk? Or Sam’s Club? (It figures that on my Last Ever Sam’s Club run, I’d get a carton containing a horrible little creature. I do bulk shopping at Costco now—maybe that’s an even better call than I thought?)

Should I tell someone? Sue someone? (Uh.) Write a concerned letter? Save it in a baggie in my freezer? The fruit flies are getting really excited, but I’m not sure I want to throw away my evidence…

What do you think?