Denise Sankey, from Appley Bridge, Greater Manchester, shared a photo of the grey moldy leftover on social media, asking her friends if they wanted to take her 19-year-old daughter, Liv, and jokingly offered to pay anyone who’s willing.
The plate of food had been left festering for so long after Liv had forgotten about it, with Denise making the shocking discovery on July 16.
Denise was about to put something in the rarely used microwave when she was horrified with ‘this big ball of what looked like a dead grey cat’.
“You know the Specsavers ad where he’s trying to resuscitate the cat and it’s a hat?” Denise said. “That’s exactly what it put me in mind of. It had gone past mold, it was disgusting. There was no smell, it was like the mold had encased it all and not let any smell out.”
The 49-year-old mom’s initial thought was, “What the piggin’ hell is that?” before she connected the dots. “The next words out of my mouth were, ‘Olivia, get here’.”
Her daughter Liv apparently found the whole thing hilarious, unlike her mom.
“She was too busy laughing at it [when I shouted her down]. She thought it was hilarious, she still does,” Denise said.
After the incident, Denise immediately went to Facebook to share pictures of the horror and, appealed for someone to take Liv ‘off her hands’.
The post reads:
“Does anyone want Liv Taylor? I’m giving her away free to a good home, no actually, I will pay someone to take her and I don’t care if it’s a good home or not. I have just gone to put something in the microwave which I don’t use very often and I found her half-eaten tea from last week, I can’t cope with her, please someone send help xx”
While Denise made sure to thoroughly clean the microwave with bleach and hot water after taking the grey mouldy plate out, she hasn’t used it since.
“She’s having the first lot of food out of that microwave, I’m not eating anything out of there until she has,” she said.
Liv said that the moldy leftover started with a too-big portion of sweet chili chicken and noodles, with her saying she ‘couldn’t eat it all’ so she put it in the microwave to eat it later.
“But then I went out and I just forgot it was in there” Liv explained.
The leftover dish then sat there unnoticed for the next few days as the microwave has a blacked-out door, which means no one can see what’s inside it.
“This is why I want somebody to take her off my hands. I keep saying to her she needs a nice boyfriend but she says she doesn’t want one, she can’t be bothered,” the mom said.
As punishment, Denise did consider grounding her daughter but said she ‘didn’t want to’, adding: “I’d rather she went out.”