Expiration Dates

For many years, I couldn’t bring myself to ingest anything that had gone beyond the friendly date of expiration on a label.  Food was terminal as of midnight on that day, no exceptions.

At some point, I began to accept some deviation to that.

My wife has always checked milk, using some sort of internal smell test, and will go a day or two beyond the little numbers stamped on the carton pending the results of her olfactory perception.

I never trusted my own nose to do the same.

Eggs remain a mystery to me.  A sell-by date?  They’re good for weeks after that?  Outrageous.  What does it all mean?

Slowly, I’ve let the cloak of resistance slip from my shoulders.

I now ask my wife to smell milk and sour cream and other aromatic foodstuffs … and I run with her judgment.  I inspect breads, meats, and all the rest, as best I can, and I use it if possible.

Of course, my goal is still to use everything prior to those dates.  Internally, it makes me feel better.  Comforts me.  I doubt that will ever change, that base desire to meet the suspense, my innate trust in the date makers.

I think of this in the wake of brinner, and my use of some items that were past their dates.  (FYI – For the uninitiated, brinner is breakfast dinner.)

Bacon … tightly sealed, looked good, smelled good, felt good, done, used, and two days late!  Eggs that should have been “sold by” the end of September … cracked, beaten, and now eaten.  Bam!

Just like that, I’m a brand new guy, adventurous, and fearless.  Sort of.

Have a good night,

Bart