"best before date"

'Evian' is almost an anagram for 'naiive',which is what we are for buying bottled French tap water.

The *real* record probably belongs to things she's had in her cupboards before best-before dates were introduced. She's still using a big sack of cornflour which she inherited from her own mother, who died in 1983. Until the mid-90s we used a bottle of brown sauce whose price ended in a halfpenny; we didn't finish the bottle until about 10 years after halfpennies disappeared.

(she is also the sort of person who, if things like jam or cheese start to go mouldy, will calmly scrape the mouldy bits off and eat it anyway)

With canned food tho, the manufacturers err on the side of caution big-time and there are prolly few canned foods that can't be eaten several years after their sell-by date perfectly safely. I say few - I'd imagine condensed milk is one I *wouldn't* risk.

anyway there were a few left-behind tins in the pantry, including some fray bentos corned beef: which had been canned in zimbabwe, was attested taint-free courtesy a stamp from "meat-inspection station #7", and had a "best of" date of — that magic year! — 1996

to his credit, in respect of war on all cultural chauvinism, dad wz fairly gung ho abt trying it, but we persuaded him to wait till i had gone out to buy bacon instead

as it wz not our tin to throw away, we left it in the cupboard

Hello Lara!

Here in the States, our perishables tend to expire on any day of the month they wish -- this Dr Pepper I'm drinking, e.g., would have breathed its last on FEB 21 2003 if I had not killed it prematurely.

I have here a bottle of aspirin slated to expire on 3/3/2005.

Also I believe the Times Square subway station escalator repair project will be completed on July 10, 2004 (pardon the inconvenience).

http://ebay1.ipixmedia.com/abc/M28/_EBAY_c2c3790f4bd8b6d70fb6c8d74578e866/i-1.JPG

(Must by milk tomorrow!)

Vector to the totality = finding a trout in a fed-ex package five years too late

And I have 20+ year old spices that I bought to cook something that I never used since, but I guess the worst that can happen from that is stale food.

i wz just talking to mum on the phone and she said that yesterday dad asked for a piece of cake, and she said there isn't any

but then she remembered aunt penny had sent us a cake for xmas: which we had all larfed abt at the time as even still in the parcel it felt like the densest heaviest cake ever baked by ppl not born on jupiter

anyway mum got the tin out of the larder and tipped the cake out, and cut a slice and took it up to dad — warning him that it might be a bit stale, as it wz from xmas (but fruitcakes do keep well, and v.heavy surely means v.moist...)

so dad took a bite and declared it inedible (which is quite severe: he wz at school during WW2 and will eat anything!!)

when mum came back into the kitchen she saw a 'best before" date on the bottom of the cake tin: 1990!!

top present aunt penny!!

And, erm... never mind.

I can top all of you. When I cleaned out the dirt queen's kitchen, I found, like spices that had expired in 1987. Do you have any idea how long it takes spices to go off? So you can surely IMAGINE how old and nasty these things were. If you thought spices didn't go bad, well, let me tell you they get mouldy and yucky like everything else.

There was ketchup that expired in 1996 that was still in her "in use" pile. GAH!

white rice goes stale but very, very slowly. brown rice retains the germ, which has oils, so brown rice can and will go rancid on you.

"I can and will go rancid on you" – Liam Ricin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KjExPRUBkA&ab_channel=NewEnglandWildlife%26More

opening old tinned foods

even tins from the 50's/60's can have bled dangerous amounts of lead into the food contents.

this is extremely my shit

Huh, I eat mostly white rice, so I've never realized brown rice went bad quicker.

so does whole wheat flour for the same reason. and walnuts if you forget about them in the cabinet for too long. they all get that same smell!

In unopened containers of yogurt I feel like the bacteria that are supposed to be there help fight off the ones that aren’t. Though opened containers that have started to turn pink are definite throwaways. Also butter that has been in the fridge past its date is fine as long as it smells okay.

many xps: andy the grasshopper's old swedish grandmother sounds like she was making [swedish name for] JUNKET, which my grandmother also often made, according to my mum (who i think never made it but she didn't have a sweet tooth and didn't bake or make puddings at all)

junket went out of fashion when they invented angel delight the processes of delivering milk to the doorstep -- inc.pateurisation and levels of decreaming and dilution -- meant that milk, no longer raw, generally lacked the (good) bacteria to set nicely. i very dimly recall having it as a child once, but not finding it especially exciting. you ate it with ground nutmeg.

or else the swedish version of clabber

I'm still haunted by the can of creamed corn from 1934 I saw opened on YouTube last night.

creamed corn is bad enough when its fresh tbrr

pain and sorrow

yes, creamed corn is already cursed enough. But exhumed corpse of creamed corn spilling out of 85 yr old rusted vessel is the stuff of nightmares.

I used to habitually drink out of date beer as my friend's dad was a landlord and we took the cans that were too old to sell

I have a best before 2008 limited edition bottle from Fullers that say 'thanks to the government we have to put a best before on but beer doesn't go off and in fact only gets better, no rly'. I also have a bottle of smirnoff moscow mule that's probably about 25 years old.

I once got some bottles of ale off the reductions shelf in my local co-op and their IT system wouldn't let me buy them because they were a few days out of date. I told them bottled ale is good for decades, but the system had the last word.

An update on my Best Before Dec 2003 tin of 'Mackerel Fillets in Spicy Tomato Sauce' since we have a revive... I'm still hoarding them.

It's been a tough year, so there were moments, but I reckon I can hold out for the two decade mark and make it to 2023 with them intact now.

thread very much in character lol

i unearthed a tin of M&S "curiously strong" mints "best before" 01 oct 2013

they are fine they are made almost entirely of different types of sugar (w/some beef gelatin)

i remembered why i didn't finish them at the time, "curiously" is no substitute for "extra" in the strong mints game

time for krakow to eat those mackerel fillets btw

Three years on I still have them, The two decade anniversary passed me and the mackerel fillets by. They live (or die) for another day/decade now.

I live on a diet of mainly salt, crystallised honey and distilled alcoholic beverages so I can absorb the preternaturally long shelf life they possess. It's working well for me so far!

The two decade anniversary passed me and the mackerel fillets by.

Not so fast, krakow!

An update on my Best Before Dec 2003 tin of 'Mackerel Fillets in Spicy Tomato Sauce'

According to my flawless calculation, Dec 2003 + 20 years = Dec 2023. I don't know what calendar you consulted, but that's next month. No takebacks allowed!

My mistake, sorry, I was reading the posting date. Maybe I have time to get them a cake or a card or something before December appears.

Okay, I have two jars in my pantry, and they look fine. One expires 12/05/18, the other 1/17/19. I think I was gonna make chipped beef gravy over toast, not sure

If ILX says they're safe, I'll eat them.. they look fine and the seals are intact

https://i5.peapod.com/c/3L/3LK7X.jpg

Open and take a deep sniff, if it smells OK take a small nibble. If that's OK, dried beef party time!

Good advice... a deep whiff of five year old meat

okay, actually the older one has some funky white stuff, I'll give it to the raccoons in the vacant lot outside my kitchen window

OK, start small with the whiffing.

Speaking of canned fish ...

I still have the mackerel fillets in spicy tomato sauce with a best before date of December 2003, by the way.

― NWOFHM! Overlord (krakow), Friday, September 28, 2012 3:30 PM (eleven years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I have a couple cans of sardines that are at least that old. The last time I opened one it was fine. Maybe two-three years ago.

― nickn, Friday, September 28, 2012 4:05 PM (eleven years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think I opened another one a few years after this, and though it didn't smell bad, it didn't smell fresh either. I used it in a meal and when I was done eating I said to myself, "OK, you don't have to do this" and threw the remaining can or two away.

lol

And apparently I never posted this here, but I have plastic bottles of bloody mary mix from a party I went to in Sept 2001 (the weekend before 9/11). I keep them in the fridge, and have sniffed now and then and they smell (OK, and taste) fine. It's more of a science experiment at this point, since I really don't make bloodys at home, nor ever think to drink tomato juice. I hate throwing away "perfectly good" food.

I remember reading a few years back where they found some intact bottles of British ale from like 1904 in a shipwreck... they tried a little bit and said it tasted like ham

I've seen reports that honey has been found in Egyptian tombs, and it's still edible.

Also a few years ago some liquor (whiskey, I presume) was found in a shipwreck that was sold at a premium. It won't go bad as long as the cork remains intact.

there's some wine writer I was reading who tried a bottle of 1542 german reisling.. he said it wasn't all that great but it was fun to 'taste the sunshine' from 600 years ago

And apparently I never posted this here, but I have plastic bottles of bloody mary mix from a party I went to in Sept 2001 (the weekend before 9/11). I keep them in the fridge, and have sniffed now and then and they smell (OK, and taste) fine. It's more of a science experiment at this point, since I really don't make bloodys at home, nor ever think to drink tomato juice. I hate throwing away "perfectly good" food.

lol i get "throwing away perfectly good food", but 20+ year old plastic bottles, may very well *not* be perfectly good and safe IMHO. honey wasn't in plastic bottles so it prolly poses zero threat of adulteration

Yeah, it's entirely "science experiment" at this point.

I tried a 1961 German white (maybe even a Reisling) at least 40 yrs after it was bottled. Not good, and after a few sips I dumped it. My father had bought it and stored it in a closet in our non-air conditioned So Cal home.

istr in Jane Grigson's Fish Book she talks about laying down tinned sardines like wine. you have to rotate them occasionally.

honey is a literally preservative, above all of itself (turns time into a flat circle)

it's where i store my crimson sarcophagus juice

can you go on a best before date with someone?

on the other side of things i bought a thing of tamari when i went gluten free earlier this summer... it has a best before date of february 11, 2026... if it's not gone by then, am i really going to notice it's expired? and is it _actually_ ever going to expire, or does it have an expiration date because all food products here are legally required to?

honestly a lot of the stuff i have in my pantry is there as a prophylactic. do i have any chinese five-spice? good, all is well with the world. have i ever actually used chinese five-spice in my cooking? no but goddamn i COULD IF I WANTED TO. unless i check it and find out it expired five years ago.

my knowledge of wine aging is limited to "day of the tentacle", where at some point you need a bottle of vinegar. the solution, of course, is to travel back in time to the late 18th century and put a bottle of wine where nobody else will find it.

i couldn't ever figure that solution out, myself. steven moffat probably had the solution within five seconds.

Egg Thread Noodles, best before 2018. yes, or no?

probably fine, you're gonna boil them anyway

they look like the dictionary definition of inert.

am more surprised i hadn't thought to use them in 6 years.

I'm saying yes

https://news.sky.com/story/amp/cheese-dating-back-3-600-years-found-in-chinese-tomb-researchers-say-13222530

How much they asking for it?

Need to poll “would you eat 3600yo old cheese?”

I can't cite the original, but a while back I read the phrase "cheese is milk's bid for immortality". This discovery backs that up in a literal sense.