It’s not just theory…you really do need to rotate stuff from food storage. Today’s example: salsa from two years ago. It keeps just fine in the classic ‘cool, dark place’..like my basement…but I figured it was time to update. So…a quick trip to CostCo. As you may notice, there are some markings on the lids. The ‘C’ in a circle indicates it was purchased at CostCo, the price is marked on it, and the date.
I keep quite a bit of this sort of product on hand. Cook up some chicken (or open a can of chicken), shread it up, cook it in a bunch of salsa, mix in a large amount of cooked rice, cover with Mexican cheese blend, and eat with corn chips. Cheap, filling, and pretty yummy.
But, the takeaway here is that you need to rotate through your stuff otherwise when you finally need it you might not like what you find. Also, ‘best buy’ dates are wildly conservative.
I mark my stores too. Always good to use FIFO, instead of letting things age gracefully, and sometimes the “Best by” date is hard to read. I do differentiate between “Sell by” (used for perishables like milk), “Best by”, for most everything else (I’ve eaten soup that was 10 years past their date) and “Use by”, often marked on acidic foods like tomatoes and pineapple. I do pay a little more attention to those.
Thrivelife “cansolidator”. Suspect I stole the idea from CZ, but it radically simplifies can rotation.
We have a nice cool place to store our caned foods, we needed some olives and pickles for a gathering and asked the young step in law couple to open the containers and place then out on a relish tray, after they looked at the expiration dates of the containers they refused to open them up and stated that they were past the recommended use by dates and that we needed to throw them away. I was furious when I heard that, then I thought that I really felt sorry for them as they had been conditioned by society and did not know any better, and that I did not need to worry about them taking or using my stores of canned foods. I wonder if they will reconsider their thinking when all there is, is out of date canned foods that are available?
I think it’s a shame that people have been brainwashed about those dates. The only home canned foods that weren’t nice past a few years were fruits. The only commercially canned foods that were really bad was an ancient can of tomato sauce that had been forgotten in the back of a cupboard, and a can of butter that was at least 10 years old, if not older. It turned into cheese. I didn’t want to eat it, but the chickens liked it.
Yes ma’am. They’ll learn the hard way, unfortunately.
The only things I’ve seen that are actually bad by their marked date (any marked date) are certain bagged salads and some brands of triple antibiotic cream.
How was the antibiotic cream bad (how can we tell)?
Generally it gets a off color, dried up, and it just doesn’t work. The Bacitracin ointments have been found to keep longer than triple antibiotic ointments.
My cue that it is bad is that it stops working even if it looks ok.
Regular use should improve a current in one or two days; if it stops making cuts better it’s done for.
Got it. Thanks.
The YouTube prepper influencers are constantly saying “stack food to the rafters now!” almost daily and it’s driving me crazy. Then they show a tabletop of their latest haul, I’ve often wonder what kinds of meals they plan to make out of such a hodgepodge of items shown because the vast majority of items are super carb heavy and spam. It’s nice to see someone actually make a meal out of those items once in a while.
Hell, even Bison Preppers long time ago microwave wheat bread or flatbread recipe makes more sense than some of these prepper haul videos today.
MMMmmm… nuked flatbread. Half cup whole wheat flour, quarter cup water. Mix, spread on plate. Microwave 90 seconds ( 1200 watt microwave oven ). Flip, nuke again 90 seconds. Butter, add salt. Yummy. The difference between this and all your store bought processed crap is I can eat this every day and not get sick of it ( twenty years now ). And you’ll actually get used to the taste, kind of, sorta. A little like wet cardboard, but then, Spam tastes a little like lips and buttholes.
Throw a package of Knorr noodles in the pot, 2 cups of water/milk, a can of GV chicken and a double handful of frozen mixed veg’s, bring to a boil for 2 mins. Turn heat to low, install lid, come back in 10 mins. Suppah is reddy! 2 people can get 2 meals out of that. That is 4 meals for about $5. We do it all the time. No it’s not fancy assed. But it fills the hole and doesn’t blow the wallet.