Expiration dates are a PLOY!

[Slytovhand]

HA! I had a gallon of milk go bad, so I took it out of my fridge, set it on the table and forgot about it. So 2 weeks later I find it again.. it had turned black and bloated...I was scared to touch it for fear it would explode all over me.

What???

You left a gallon of milk on your table and forgot about it for 2 weeks...????

[Dave1982]

You know, I'll bet that all of these people who think expired food is still good have never had food poisoning. Hell, they probably haven't actually drank bad milk.

I've never had what I'd call "full blown" food poisoning, nor have I had salmonella poisoning, but I've spent some pretty goshdarn miserable time trapped in the bathroom feeling like I was crapping my brains out due to having eaten something bad. And I've accidentally drank milk sour enough that the taste made me vomit.

As a result, I'm usually the first to toss things that are past their expiration date, especially milk and deli meat (though deli meat doesn't usually have an expiration date, once it's more than a a few days old, a week at most, it starts to taste terrible, especially turkey).

Either these food hoarders have been lucky enough to not get sick, or perhaps they're made of sterner stuff than me. But I'll bet if they do ever get sick, they'll listen.

[BookstoreEscapee]

No, but the taste of the tea will alter quite a bit. I wouldn't recommend it, but it won't effect(or is it affect? I can never tell) your health.

affect (which, for the record, can also be a noun...just to confuse things more )

Someone please tell my father that nothing lasts forever.....except Twinkies. He says "It's STILL GOOD!" all the damn time...

Well, they are Twinkies...

What???

You left a gallon of milk on your table and forgot about it for 2 weeks...????

That's what I was thinking! Last week I left the milk out overnight on the counter. It was perfectly fine when I took it out of the fridge and drank some of it. I realized in the morning that it was still on the counter . At least there was only an inch or two left in the container so I didn't have to toss too much. I'm paranoid about milk, anyway.

[draftermatt]

SC: Then she mumbled something about having to replace her printer every six months anyway (), paid, and left.

I've heard of people like that. They'll buy a cheap printer (really cheap, bottom of the line) from Wal-mart or wherever, use it until it runs out of ink, then buy another printer, and either sell the old one on Craigslist for a few bucks (though I'm sure some will attempt to return it).

Not a bad idea when you think about it, but I'd hate to have to change my settings for a new printer every time.

[Dreamstalker]

I've never had what I'd call "full blown" food poisoning, nor have I had salmonella poisoning, but I've spent some pretty goshdarn miserable time trapped in the bathroom feeling like I was crapping my brains out due to having eaten something bad.

Three words: spoiled green chile. All I'll say is I was probably really lucky not to need to go to the hospital...still not sure how I managed to not notice it was off (it was diced green chile in fast food). I used to frequent a local Mexican takeout until a few years ago when I got really sick for about a day...wound up with some weird gastrointestinal bacterial thing that hung on for the better part of the summer.

My dad traveled all over the world in the late seventies, and has quite a few tales of unexpected food poisoning. Between that and my mom's culinary school training, I'm fairly adept at figuring out what's still good and what's not. My rule is: if it doesn't have a date, if I can't remember when I bought it out it goes.

[Canarr]

HA! I had a gallon of milk go bad, so I took it out of my fridge, set it on the table and forgot about it. So 2 weeks later I find it again.. it had turned black and bloated...I was scared to touch it for fear it would explode all over me.

Okay, I gotta ask... what kind of table do you have, that you could lose a frickin' gallon of milk on it?

[Mark Healey]

I've heard of people like that. They'll buy a cheap printer (really cheap, bottom of the line) from Wal-mart or wherever, use it until it runs out of ink, then buy another printer, and either sell the old one on Craigslist for a few bucks (though I'm sure some will attempt to return it).

Not a bad idea when you think about it, but I'd hate to have to change my settings for a new printer every time.

I used to do that.

I used to see laser printers at garage sales for 10-15 dollars. I'd pull the toner cartridge and if it felt about half full I'd buy the printer. About half of them worked. A fourth of them need a minor repair. The remaining fourth were trashed. I used the first half and first fourth and keep the cartridge on the remaining fourth. This was when a laser printer was about $600 and a cartridge was about $90.

Since most linux distros ship with the drivers for every supported printer it was just a matter of changing the model on a dropdown menu.

[Dave1982]

Just being pedantic, but HP cartridges will generally not damage your printer if they dry out.

That may be true, but for brands that use separate ink tanks, it can be an issue. That's just my standard spiel for explaining to people why I will NOT be issuing a full refund for expired ink (as if "expired" isn't a sufficient explanation in and of itself). Breaking it down by brand would just be counterproductive, since it would either confuse the customer or cause them to try to play games with me (well why this brand and not that brand? what difference does it make? you should take them ALL).

Besides, ink cartridges technically fall under our 14-day return policy anyway. We usually make an exception as long as there's at least six months to go before they expire, so long as the return is otherwise legit.

[ottid]

I've heard of people like that. They'll buy a cheap printer (really cheap, bottom of the line) from Wal-mart or wherever, use it until it runs out of ink, then buy another printer, and either sell the old one on Craigslist for a few bucks (though I'm sure some will attempt to return it).

I'm not sure if people who do this have every tried buying a new cartridge for their printer, and then seeing how long the cartridge lasts? Most of the time the cartridge that comes with the printer is a "demo" cartridge, and contains a lot less ink than the replacement. What's really annoying is when customers look at the cartridge in the printer to go find their new replacement ones, quite often I then have to look at a compatible chart, for the same brand, or hope that they know what printer they have.

[sanchopanza65]

At the food shelf I volunteer at, we sometimes get the most interesting items donated from people who clean out their pantries. I believe the oldest ones I found were a can of salmon which looked like it might have been from the 1970's, (there was no date on it), a box of Wheaties featuring the Minnesota Twins world series win, (last time was in 1991) and a box of Bisquick Light of indeteminant age, although it still advertised itself as "new" and the box had a style that made it look like it was from the early 90's

[Difdi]

My Mother found a tupperware container of frozen strawberries from 1978 the last time she cleaned her big freezer...she checks it more frequently now...

[MadMike]

I've never had what I'd call "full blown" food poisoning, nor have I had salmonella poisoning, but I've spent some pretty goshdarn miserable time trapped in the bathroom feeling like I was crapping my brains out due to having eaten something bad.

My son had a case of food poisoning during Christmas week, at least that's what they're guessing it was. He and I had run out to Sheetz for one of our late night snack runs, and a few hours later he was having severe stomach pains. We ended up taking him to the hospital where he proceeded to bring up what looked like everything he'd eaten that day. I'm guessing it was from eggs, because he bought a breakfast sandwich of some sort. I don't like eggs, so nothing happened to me.

Once they pumped him full of painkillers, he was a lot happier. Hell, he was high as a kite! They kept him overnight, and the next day you couldn't even tell anything had happened to him.

My Mother found a tupperware container of frozen strawberries from 1978 the last time she cleaned her big freezer...she checks it more frequently now...

I recently cleaned out the pantry, and found quite a few items that were way past their dates. Probably the worst one was some chocolate powder that said "Best if used by May 2001." What really made this one bad was the fact that I built the pantry in 2005, so that particular item shouldn't have been moved into the pantry in the first place.

[SG15Z]

I had a conversation on my Linkshell in Final Fantasy XI about this one time. I used "affect" as a verb and some guy argued with me. Turns out I was right. Affect is a verb. Effect is the noun.

Usually yes, but their are cases in which effect is a verb and affect is a noun. So that doesn't help.

English is confusing. Period.

[ottid]

Could we juat make it that affect and effect mean the same thing, or just put it down to one spelling, and make one of them have the interchangeable meaning? There are enough words like that already, why not make another one?

[lordlundar]

We had a carton of cream that seemed to defy all known sciences. We had this cream opened (so not sealed) for over six months past the due date. We actually finished it before it spoiled, and there was no signs of it becoming butter. It was cream from start to finish, which was WELL past the due date.

Still haven't figured that one out.