(no subject)

[serene]

I'm not assuming it's food poisoning, because it's silly to assume such a thing[1]. However, let's just go ahead and add digestive troubles and an urge to vomit to our list of things to deal with today, shall we? ;-)




[1] Even though I ate meat in a house where the winner of the Oldest Use-By Date contest when I was cleaning out the cupboards today was December, 2003.

Comments

[nitoda]

Hope you soon feel better! On the "out-of-date food" thing - I remember being horrified by my mum's cupboards a few years ago. I think previous generations weren't as aware of use-by dates because, let's face it, there weren't any in days gone by and it was left up to the consumer to decide how long something would keep. Tins, in particular, were held to be forever good and never thrown out unless there was clear evidence of their having blown for example.
I try to clear my own cupboards regularly but am still sometimes surprised by items a year or more over their use-by dates.

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

In general, we keep little enough food around that it's not an issue, but once in a while I'll notice something has expired, and I'm totally paranoid about food safety (and I recognize that), so out it goes even if it's probably just fine.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

Blurgh. I hope it passes soon!

[deakat]

I dunno about the cans. On the one hand, I think it's a great idea to have best-before dates, but I suspect that they may be good much longer than they say, and the producers just want us to keep buying more.

Maybe that's just because I *hate* throwing out food.

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

I will keep undented cans up to 6 months past their date, but that's it. We solved the throwing-away-food problem in a bit of an unconventional way: we intentionally buy less food. We shop several times a week (our shopping trip does triple duty as an exercise-and-socializing walk), and I don't keep many canned foods around (tuna, corn, tomato products, not much else).

[deakat]

I've inherited a longstanding family trait: when something's on sale, stock up! :)

Now that that I think of it, though, we don't use that many canned foods. Time to do a major cleaning and get rid of the ones that are collecting dust, I suppose. The next time I buy artichoke hearts, I'll make sure that I use them.

[pyrzqxgl.livejournal.com]

Ugh, I hope you're feeling a lot better today!

I'm sure I've got some older stuff than that myself, some of the Celestial Seasonings boxes in particular, for starters.

[bastette-joyce.livejournal.com]

In early 2006, my sister and I helped my mother pack up to move. Sis got the unsavory job of cleaning out the fridge. Mom and I were in the other room, sorting and packing, and every so often, from the kitchen, we'd hear, "2001, mom??!" Oh, did I mention my mother is a hoarder?

I don't know how my parents managed to stay married for 20 years. Mom is a hoarder and her place is a mess, dad is a neat-freak who keeps very little clutter around. Dad is also phobic about food spoilage. He was always freaking out about rotten stuff in the fridge and cabinets.

I seem to have inherited my mom's behaviors, but not her motivations, while at the same time, I also have my dad's food-poisoning phobia. (So I know how you feel, serenejournal!) The result is that I tend not to clean out my cupboards very often, but when I do, I get rid of some pretty old stuff that I wouldn't have dreamed of eating. My main motivation here is laziness, rather than any desire to hold onto things. So I kind of go along for a long period, appearing to the average outsider like I'm my mother's mini-me. And then all of a sudden one day, I'll turn into my dad and dump most of it (which feels great!).

Someday I'll tell the story of the horror that was in a box of raisins, which I ate, at my mother's house.

[pipyn.livejournal.com]

Huh, something only 4 years past the date on it is in the "recent" pile in my mom's kitchen. Though I did go through all the cabinets in the kitchen on the farm and get rid of anything over x (I forget what my arbitrary cutoff was--possibly anything from the '90's) years old a year and a half ago. Except of course for the stuff that was several decades old, like from the 40's or '50's. Very decorative, adds atmosphere.