Expires today so I can't use it today

[dalesys]

How else did ya think they reduced the fat content by 75%...

Zero additives. It's done with a cream separator, a centrifuge type device. Or by letting the milk set for a day or two, the cream will separate and rise to the top.

My grandfather had a hand-cranked separator at his ranch in Callao.

(dances the Cow Cow Boogie)

[EricKei]

Still nasty stuff. What IS the grey watery crud in there, then, if not water o_O? Maybe it was just el cheapo milk ^_^;>

[BeenThereDoneThat]

My stepdaughter - ok, she was probably a preteen at the time - once poured out almost an ENTIRE gallon jug of milk because it was about a day past the best by date stamped on it. I was livid!! Milk tends to keep very long in our fridge...and it's expensive...and the kids drank a lot of it. *sigh*

Best way to do the smell test is to pour a bit of milk into a small dish and then smell it. If you smell the top of the container you're likely to smell a bit of spoiled stuff that's crusted around the top. Of course, if it's REALLY bad, you'll smell it from across the room the second that container is opened.

[blas]

I live alone, but milk doesn't last long enough around here to make it to it's suggested sell date.

I've told this story before, but once as a teen, I was grounded for throwing out "good" food. And it was not good in the least, it was my parents being neglectful of keeping track of their food in the fridge and freezer. I threw away yogurts and cottage cheese that were expired for weeks/months, I threw away meats in the freezer that were several years old, I threw away fruits and veggies that had been growing green and black stuff.....

My parents came home, saw that, grounded me, sent my friend home, went through the garbage, and put most of it back!

And right now, in their basement fridge, is yogurt that expired this past June. I want to throw it away so badly, but I'm afraid I might lose a hand.

[BeenThereDoneThat]

blas - wow. Now, I know we have some things in our fridge that need to be thrown away...pantry too. But every once in a while hubby will go through and throw them all out, or occasionally I will if I say hey, hasn't that been here since last summer? If it makes sense to throw the stuff out, by all means...pitch it! Yuck...

[blas]

This is why I'm so glad when I move back home, that basement fridge will be shared by my brother and me only. I will be keeping everything down there.

My mom has a horrid habbit of buying foods in bulk that no one other than she and I will eat (berries, apples, whatnot). And because I don't live there and only stop by a few days a week, and she only uses the fruits for salads, a lot of it goes uneaten.

So she goes and buys more...shoves it in front of the OLD stuff, and the old stuff molds and grows body parts.

[BeenThereDoneThat]

That's a big pet peeve of mine...people not taking the time to rotate stuff (mostly food) when they buy replacements or just backups. Put the old stuff in the front and the new stuff in back, why is this so difficult??

[Dreamstalker]

I eat yogurt up to two weeks after the sell-by date. Dad buys the 'manager special' meat a lot and there's never been a problem, for some reason mom won't let me. I can get away with the ground beef as I usually use it right away in shepherd's pie or johnny mazetti (macaroni, beef and pasta sauce), but she refuses to try and freeze cuts of meat.

My grandmother would keep food in the fridge LONG past its useful life; it would be green and furry and growling when we opened the door but "don't you dare throw that out! It's still good!" We had to make sure to do the cleanouts when she was out at an appointment, otherwise she'd go into the garage and bring it back in. I'm surprised she never got sick from any of it, but she drowned everything in cheap Italian dressing so maybe that killed some bacteria.

We're still not sure whether that had to do with her Depression mindset (save everything), age (dementia), or bipolar/other mental illness. She did have some hoarding tendencies but they seemed to be limited to the junk in the attic

[BeenThereDoneThat]

Maybe I could ask my mother (if I remember) what kinds of foods they would keep past their expiration date during the Depression, and how they made sure not to get sick from eating them. It must have been really difficult to keep perishables at all; they probably had an icebox and not a refrigerator/freezer.

[Lace Neil Singer]

Again we were putting milk up for 10p; we've been having some problems with our supplier recently. I think that there's someone there who either can't read English, or has some serious problems understanding numbers. O_o No complaints this time; this lady came in, saw the price and bought the lot. It was whole milk this time and she said that her kids would probably guzzle down half of it in two days and the other half she'd freeze.

[camjuniper]

Still nasty stuff. What IS the grey watery crud in there, then, if not water o_O? Maybe it was just el cheapo milk ^_^;>

Milk itself (straight from the cow) is somewhere between 85 - 90% water. Take out the fat (which is usually 3 - 6% of milk) and all you've got left is water, protein, lactose and some vitamins and minerals. So, yup. It's mostly water.

[Ironclad Alibi]

Maybe I could ask my mother (if I remember) what kinds of foods they would keep past their expiration date during the Depression, and how they made sure not to get sick from eating them. It must have been really difficult to keep perishables at all; they probably had an icebox and not a refrigerator/freezer.

I doubt many, if any, foods had expiration dates on them back then. I think expiration dates started appearing on foods in the 1970s. I have seen many foods without expiration dates when cleaning out dead relatives' kitchens over the past couple of decades.

[BeenThereDoneThat]

I doubt many, if any, foods had expiration dates on them back then. I think expiration dates started appearing on foods in the 1970s. I have seen many foods without expiration dates when cleaning out dead relatives' kitchens over the past couple of decades.

Good point. So maybe the question I'd have to ask her is, how did they determine how long they could keep something before they'd have to throw it away. Somehow I doubt they were able to keep much extra stuff on hand to begin with...they were poor

[EricKei]

During really tight times such as the Great Depression...? I would think the method would be "rotate the food as we get more (if we don't eat the prior ration first) and pray that what we're eating won't make us sick/-er" >_<

Preserving food -- which almost nobody does at home any more, tho EVERY grocery down here sells Mason [canning] jars and fruit pectin -- is all but a lost art, and it's a great way of taking something that normally becomes inedible within days, and making it safely last for months. Lost bread/pain perdu is another method of using something (in this case, hard-as-a-rock stale bread) "expired", but not yet unsafe, and making it edible again.

[Flying Grype]

...taking something that normally becomes inedible within days, and making it safely last for months.

Oh oh, I saw something in the local Asian grocery store today -- "meat floss"! It's typically pork, which has been stewed with flavours until all the little fibres fall apart, and then it's dried in an oven. You can throw it into soup or something and it reconstitutes into a very fine meat mince. I've never had it, but meat is creeping back into my diet and I probably will eventually. But I remember thinking that when I saw the sign on the aisle: what a neat way to preserve food.