Out Of Date Food


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alisoncc your post #19, is a little short on historical fact.

Evidence is known that the mixed spices ( curry) were used in 1700 BC Mesopotamia, and in India 800 BC . The fist known spices arrived in western Europe around 1300 AD.

The British 'Raj' took over from the East India Company in 1858, it ended with independence 1947. During that time curry dishes were introduced into the English diet,not to every ones taste,more than likely soldiers and diplomats that had served in India.

I am sure the British ate beef in their diet,while serving in India.

In reading the history of British soldiers in India,the soldiers who spoke of their diet,said they were "sick of mutton and longed for a slice of roast beef".

To say the British 'invented' curry during the 'Raj' period is not ,quite accurate.

After talking curry,I'll be cooking ' chicken tika masala' for dinner tonight. :)

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My wife is terrible with out of date foods, she regularly empties the cupboards to check and throws it all out ! It annoys the hell out of me, as I hate waste of any kind, food or otherwise. I cannot

Definitely not the kind who built the British Empire, where curry was invented to mask the stench of rotting beef on the menu. IMHO far too often this "vulnerable people" thing goes well over the top

I had a new freezer last week. It stated in the instructions that food can last for years in the freezer as long as there are no power outtages. Food that has been in more than a couple of years may b

I forgot about your natural fridge over there ,Over here food will spoil in hours if not minutes I think its even worse on the East coast

You definitely don't want Samonella or Botulism poisoning. I got it once from a Custard pie/Tart that I left out for no more than 20 mins

Seems like Egg custard is one of the worst for it spoiling that is.

Think im gonna have Kari tonight

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  • 2 months later...

Well, Im with Bilbraborn's ethos in general, and his Mrs's in particular. Stew does definitely taste better left on the hob in a warmish kitchen for a couple of days. Boil it up for a good ten mins and if anything lives after that, well, it deserves to!

My two children, now in their early thirties, seem to be the only fit ones of their contemporaries. My daughter has four children aged under ten. She works, runs a home, has a life and enjoys many hobbies. My son does a ten hour shift regularly, sometimes longer in summer, cleaning high rise office block windows in a large city. He parties at the weekends, plays football and goes salsa dancing in the evenings after work. Neither have taken time off work for illness in years.

The reason? I was never fastidious about them getting dirty whilst playing. I didnt scream hysterically if I caught their little tongues lapping at a snotty trail emanating from their noses when they were toddlers. Or as I turned round just in time to watch them deposit a sweetie into their mouth that seconds earlier had been on the floor.

As for myself, I'm living proof about the theory that eating dirt and playing rough is good for a developing immune system. I was born with a life threatening illness. Docs told my mum I probably wouldnt live long enough to start school. So, rather than wrap me up in cotton wool, she decided to let me enjoy the time I had, no holds barred. Being the youngest of six and not being entitled to a wheelchair until I did start school, I played with my siblings and their friends by crawling up and down the streets (and often played near Dunkirk canal too) I no doubt picked up a gazillion germs on my hands every single day - the same hands that were not always washed properly for dinner either! I caught every childhood illness known including diptheria and whooping cough, but I came through them all. I started school, finished school, and university, worked 40 hours a week for the local authority, had children, kept a home etc etc. Now, I'm more than half a century old. So much for the doc's original prognosis!!!

I threw my kids out to play at every opportunity, and my daughter is doing the same with hers. (No TV till after tea, and they have to play out until it is ready) I can count on one hand how many day's school they;ve missed due to illness, whereas her friends' children are off every other week with coughs, colds, tummy upsets and so on.

Where there's muck there's T cells, is what I say (within reason of course) And, before you ask, I really do wash my hands properly now :-)

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Do think that this "expiry date" stuff is getting a bit out of hand. Years ago a bottle aspirins would sit in a cupboard for almost decades, yet we swallowed them down when required without a thought. Now everyone hyper-ventilates at the thought that they may be as much as a few days out of date. The other day noticed on a bottle of bathroom cleaning gel that it had a "best-before" date. Like "will we all die if I continue to use it".

Must be good from a marketing/manufacturing perspective if you can get users to throw away perfectly good products for no reason, and then they get to buy more. So interpretation still requires the application of common sense.

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Today, I had for my tea, a frozen Chicken and Asparagus Risotto, it had been knocking about in the freezer for a while.

My Hubbs had the remains of yesterdays dinner.

My Risotto was not really very nice but i couldn't be bothered to cook anything else so i ate it. When i had finished; i retrieved the sleeve from the bin to look at the date. What a shock i got, the date was 3.9.2012...14months out of date! Well i will let you know how i get on tomorrow! Silly i know, not something i would normally do. I hope i get away with it. I ate it 7hrs and 15mins ago...so far so good.

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My wife is terrible with out of date foods, she regularly empties the cupboards to check and throws it all out ! It annoys the hell out of me, as I hate waste of any kind, food or otherwise.

I cannot get through to her that some things such as dried goods, does not go off quickly.

Obviously I'm not talking meat and chicken etc.

As for being too clean, one of my daughters is a clean freak ! she is constantly cleaning work tops, hands, kids faces you name it !

She uses those anti bacterial hand cleaners and even wipes the supermarket trolley handles before she will touch them

!

Her two kids get every bug going and are constantly sick with something or other, yet she cannot see she is the culprit by killing off all the good as well as bad bacteria in her house and surrounds, so the kids have not built up a natural defence to it.

I keep telling her but she is just that way.

Her sister ( her twin) is just a normal mum, her kids are always grubby, not dirty just kids playing in the yard grubby, she has two dogs, an assortment of other pets, and a generally always untidy house and her kids never seem to get sick with coughs and colds like her sisters.

Sort of speaks for itself to me.

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My brother married a woman the same...the whole shop from the supermarket straight into hot water and scrubbed before put away in the cupboards.

And as for 'down there'...The doctor told her..."Stop scrubbing it woman!..you've got no natural bacterias to ward off infections!"

That woman didn't get thrush...she got a flock of starlings.. :rolleyes:

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My brother married a woman the same...the whole shop from the supermarket straight into hot water and scrubbed before put away in the cupboards.

And as for 'down there'...The doctor told her..."Stop scrubbing it woman!..you've got no natural bacterias to ward off infections!"

That woman didn't get thrush...she got a flock of starlings.. :rolleyes:

Bloody hell I nearly spat my lunch all over the keyboard !

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Carni, my mum has stuff in her freezer going back to the 70's!!!! Mainly fruit mind you from the garden. I used some very out of date gusgogs to make mint and gusgog jelly last year and it was great!

Frozen stuff is fine as long as it is reheated properly to over 75C, just the quality goes, which is why it probably tasted funny, and can get dehydrated in the freezer after a while.

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Who puts the use by date on home grown stuff? I think it was introduced with good intent but it is probably a nice little earner in some cases. It has also been the cause of huge amounts of food being wasted. Food that the Phillipinos would make good use of right now.

Re #28. Magic!

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There's one of these organic wholefood shops in West Bridgford. On a Sunday they pile all the remaining veg in trays neatly in their skip as they have new deliveries on a Monday. My daughter and I used to then fetch the trays of veg and take them to the Sumac centre for people to help themselves. An example week. 5 trays of baking potatoes ( still perfect), 3 trays of aubergines ( fresh as you'd like) and more trays of carrots than we could be bothered collecting.

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:biggrin: Everyday, I make it my practice to check through my pantry (though small it be, living by myself) for perishable foods; if there are any, then they get used on that day - this way, there's never any waste.

PS: It would be a disgrace to me, if I had to throw away food stuffs!

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Jackson, I totally agree with you about not wasting food, neither my husband or i came from upbringings were there was much in the way of money around.

We learnt all of our beliefs from watching our parents make the best of things.

I don't know if the Council in Nottingham have provided you with a bin for waste food: egg shells; veg peelings and tea bags etc,(We don't have the kind of garden that i need to make compost or what ever you use waste for in the garden) we have one of the bins and all that goes in there from our house are things that i can't do anything more with.

I have so many ways of stretching my food and sometimes the meal one day can be part of what follows the next two days, all good stuff i can assure you. When i see what is thrown away sometimes by other people it shocks me, it is so deeply embedded in my mind not to waste anything that i have no intention of ever changing.

PS, like you, we love our stewed fruit and custard, yesterday we had some plums from the freezer dated 2010 and they were scrumptious. mmmmm. :) :)

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A friend told me that she "Pigged out" on a pack of "Two years out of date" chocolate bisuits over the weekend. She is perfectly ok and furthemmore.....she is a doctor :)

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When I lived in Ethiopia we used to get tins of Bulgarian stewing beef that were anything up to five years out of date. As long as the tins were not "Blown" they were fit to eat.

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I had a new freezer last week. It stated in the instructions that food can last for years in the freezer as long as there are no power outtages. Food that has been in more than a couple of years may be affected flavour/colour/texture wise but is perfectly safe to eat. I have it in writing...

We were really bad off when I was growing up and on a Saturday evening dad would wait at the back doors of the Co-op on Crown Island, when he'd get everything being thrown out, particularly bread and cooked meats, for pennies in cost. On Sunday and Monday our dinner was always called Co-op hash! He also got tins free when the label had fallen of. This was called Dinner Supreeze, announced in a French accent to make us all laugh - mind you, some of the conncoctions were hilarious too! I remember one day we had tinned salmon, macaroni cheese and baked beans, that took some keeping down, I kid you not!

That said, I am not good when it comes to not wasting food these days. Since the kids have left home (ever open traps, they had!) my husband and I are not good at finishing things off before they go, well, off. I'm not a very inventive cook, I fear. My health is pretty poor, adn some days it is all I can do to rustle up a ping meal, though I loathe myself for it.

In an effort to stop throwing whole loaves to the birds we bought a magnificent bread maker and havent bought shop stuff, or wasted any, for almost a year, either. Every little helps, I suppose.

Here endeth my confession for the day.

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  • 7 months later...

Well, I decided to clear my Pantry out a couple of weeks ago and ended up with a little pile of out of date tins and jars to be tried. We had one year old Tomato soup for Breakfast; Lunch and Tea over a week. Very nice too. No Deterioration at all.

Various Tinned Veg that I had over bought, when they were on offer.Dated early 2013, All perfect.

Yesterday we had from the Freezer, some Lamb chops bought some time early last year. mmmmmm .Delicious.

And Today we are having Chillie Con Carni made with Uncle Bens sauce dated 15.10.2012

Watch this space :huh:

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Looks like it may be a 'Queue for the Loo event'................later at Chez Carni.................

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