Kathleen wrote:
>
> 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were FIVE YEARS out of date.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.

Yea, that's pretty nasty.

I don't normally do the creamy type dressings other than Marie's Super
Blue. For the Super Blue, I generally don't go more than a week past the
"best by" date. For other vinaigrette type dressings that stay in the
refrigerator, a year past the "best by" date isn't going to bother me.
Nothing gets older than that since I try to clean the fridge at least
once a year, putting everything in coolers while I clean the fridge and
shelves and then checking dates as I put things back.