Warning! About to Expire! Does that sign flash before your eyes when you reach for a bottle of medication or a canned good in your pantry? No? It doesn’t flash into my mind either. Ever. If I need something in one of our cupboards, drawers, cabinets, etc., I just find the item needed and get going with it. Whatever it is. If I need to take a pill, I just pop it in my mouth. If I need a canned good to make a dish, I just grab it from the pantry. If I need milk from the refrigerator, I just reach in, get the carton and start pouring. So, imagine my surprise one Sunday morning when I poured this on my pancake:
Mold on a pancake
I know! {gasp!} Pretty disgusting. What is it? Well, it’s mold in my syrup; now mold on my pancake! How could that happen? Well, in teeny, tiny fine print on the bottle, it said to refrigerate after opening and I didn’t see it! Pancake connoisseur {not} that I am, I didn’t know that you needed to refrigerate open bottles of syrup, so guess what? It grew mold! Yuck!
I have another “horror” story to share with you: many, many, many years ago, I ate Mac & Cheese out of a box. You know – the kind that comes with a packet of powdered cheese. Well, it was cheap and we were poor, so when it went on sale, I would buy lots of boxed Mac & Cheese. But, I never paid attention to expiration dates. Did you know there is an expiration date on packaged products? Well, there is. I was young and I was stupid, and I didn’t know about expiration dates (the above photo notwithstanding – I should know better by now!).
Anyway, one day I decided to make Mac & Cheese and got a box out of the cupboard. I cooked the noodles and when it was time to mix the rest of the ingredients with the cooked noodles, I opened the cheese package and poured it in the bowl. It looked really funny. Really, really funny. Kinda almost a yellowish greenish gray like you see in the photo above. I sniffed it. It didn’t smell funny. So, I mixed it up and I ate it. And, guess what happened?
I was sick as a dog! Major food poisoning! I probably should have gone to the doctor’s, but instead I toughed it out and learned my lesson and obviously, lived to tell the tale!
I don’t eat boxed Mac & Cheese anymore.
In my ongoing quest to conserve and preserve, I’ve been re-evaluating our use of items in our household. Also, as I’ve worked to create my lists of 42 household items (I’ve created household inventory lists as part of my never-ending, ongoing emergency preparedness plan), I’ve looked at things in my drawers, cupboards, closets and cabinets. And, guess what? I’m finding lots and lots and lots of things that are expired! Me – with expired stuff in my house! Haven’t I learned my lesson yet? Apparently not.
Medicine cabinet with expired contents
With the exception of the Band-Aids in the white plastic container in the bottom left of the above picture, ALL of the contents of this medicine cabinet are expired! Every single one of them. I turned them around to take the photo because it’s “my wall of shame!”
When we moved back to our new house almost 5 years ago (after the fire), I had to furnish and stock a home from scratch. So, I went to the local big box store and stocked up on aspirin, ibuprofen, acetaminophen, etc. My thought process was that it was cheaper to buy the bigger quantity at the big box store rather than a local pharmacy. Imagine my dismay when I looked at these recently and discovered ALL past their expiration dates? So much for being frugal! I’ve thrown away more pills than we took in almost 5 years! So, the lesson here? Sometimes buying in large quantities at the big box store or elsewhere is NOT a money saver!
I guess the good news is that Charlie and I aren’t sick often, don’t get headaches often and haven’t needed to take medication often! The bad news is that I’ve wasted a lot of money!
And, apparently I’m still not very good about checking expiration dates on food products. Look at this:
Expired frosting
Just missed this one by a few days…I’m on a diet anyway (see earlier posts starting with Confessions of The Incredible Shrinking Woman). But, that’s about $2.00 worth of frosting now in the trash. I’m not chancing this after my Mac & Cheese experience!
This should read “Warning! Expired!”
The other morning, Charlie woke me up with bad news – he had accidentally broken the coffee pot in the sink while trying to fill it. We had a back-up coffee maker high-in-the-sky of our pantry and I got on a ladder to hand it down to Charlie. It is a Keurig that takes the K-cups. I’d quit using it a few years ago when I realized how much money I was spending on coffee K-cups! Trying to save money, I got a regular coffee maker and put the Keurig up high-in-the-sky as a “back up” or for special occasions. So, digging around, we found some K-cups and have been using them for the last several days while we wait for our new replacement coffee pot from Amazon.
I decided to look to see if they had expiration dates.
Expired K-cups
Has it really been more than 2 years since I put this coffee maker away and stopped using K-cups? The other bad news is that we only had decaffeinated K-cups plus tea, hot cocoa, etc. No real high-test coffee! I’m a grizzly bear in the morning without my high-test coffee. It’s been a tough couple of days. Can’t wait for Wednesday!
How often do you look at expiration dates? Use me as an example of what NOT to do!
Tootles,
Related Posts:
(lists of 42 for your household inventory)
- 42 Kitchen Basics for Your New Home
- 42 Grilling Accessories and Supplies for Outdoor Cooking
- 42 Cooking Essentials for a Well-stocked Kitchen
- 42 Must Have Kitchen Utensils
- 42 Baking Essentials
- 42 Nice-to-Have Kitchen Supplies and Equipment
- 42 Spices to Have on Hand
(other lists of 42)
- 42 San Diego Museums, 28 Days and Half Off
- 42 San Diego Restaurants to Savor
- 42 Shades of Red
- 42 Things to do in San Diego
- 42 Things to Do at the San Diego Zoo
- 42 Ways to Say I Love You on Valentine’s Day
(other posts about the loss of our home in the 2007 San Diego County Witch Fire)
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