Pete C. wrote:

> Kathleen wrote:
>
>>Wayne Boatwright wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On Sat 13 Dec 2008 05:20:45p, SteveB told us...
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>My wife and mother in law (I see where my wife got it) have the idea
>>>>that if you put something in the refrigerator, there is no such thing as
>>>>shelf life.
>>>>
>>>>"Well, it's been in the refrigerator," is the common answer to "Is this
>>>>good?"
>>>>
>>>>I finally made a rule that if you can't tell me when it was cooked, I
>>>>won't eat it................ Oh, I cooked that last week some time
>>>>.............. Was it Thursday, or the Thursday before .........
>>>>
>>>>I'm telling you, we went through the Clorox wipes thing after she saw it
>>>>on Oprah, and wiped down everything in the kitchen if so much as a fly
>>>>landed on anything in the kitchen including the ceiling, but she will
>>>>leave chicken to thaw from 7 AM to 4 PM in the sink at 70 F.
>>>>
>>>>I need to get ahold of Oprah and have her do a show on shelf life and
>>>>kitchen safety foods.
>>>>
>>>>I mean, it can have brown mold on it, be unrecognizable, and she will
>>>>still say, "I don't understand it. It's been in the refrigerator."
>>>>
>>>>Help me out. I've tried explaining it. Some good sites that I could
>>>>send to her friends, and they could forward to her (she won't believe it
>>>>if it comes from me, but her friends and Oprah are Goddesses).
>>>>
>>>>Steve
>>>
>>>
>>>Perhaps if you can't convince your wife that virtually foods have a shelf
>>>life, refrigerated or not, that you will have to assign *her* a shelf life.
>>>:-)
>>>
>>
>>Either that or stage midnight command raids on the fridge, eliminating
>>suspect foods.
>>
>>I'll never forget being invited to dinner at my future parent-in-laws
>>house and being offered previously opened bottled salad dressings that
>>were FIVE YEARS out of date.
>>
>>That was just the tip of the extremely disgusting iceberg.
>>
>>And years later, my MIL, a prime example of Darwin's Hammer, was
>>offended when I declined to leave our infant daughter with her for
>>overnight visits.
>
>
> Realize that many of those a "best by" dates, not expiration or safety
> related dates, particularly for stuff like salad dressing.

Realize a bottle of cheap-ass supermarket bottled dressing might cost,
what three bucks? And when you take the lid off of a bottle of
something that's supposed to be "creamy" and there's a plug of congealed
god knows what in the neck, maybe it's time to take the "Best By" date
to heart.