Comment by diggan 3 months ago
> I date food we put in the fridge/freezer
What date are you putting on the food? Every packaging here in Spain (and Europe I assume) has both the production date and "best before" dates printed on them from the factory, and stuff that doesn't have packaging you know if they're bad by looking/smelling/tasting.
Unopened, a jar of pasta sauce is good basically indefinitely, but as soon as you actually open the jar the clock starts ticking. We don't make enough pasta at a time to use a full jar, (and in fact will usually use a small fraction of the jar) so I write the date that I opened the jar on the lid to plan its use a little better. "Hey, better find a use for this sauce, it's going to go bad eventually."
When freezing something you made or something unfrozen you won't be able to finish before its expiration date, it's good to write the date on it as well as what it is when it's not immediately obvious (for example... frozen duck fat and coconut oil look pretty much the same, and they don't smell anything when frozen).
Food that's not prepackaged. e.g., I recently threw out a container of eggs that had been in my freezer for about two years because my hens were laying so much faster than we could consume, that we had dozens of extras.
I also label things like the date I install a new HVAC filter, or how much to cut off on a piece of lumber, etc.
When I open milk, I write the date on the cap to help keep track of how long it'll remain good.
I can taste the mold in bread before it's grown big enough to become visible.
For most foods evolution has graced us with the ability to see, smell or taste any issues well before they actually become a problem. There are some things you have to look out for like botulism or salmonella, but for simple foods like bread and milk there isn't much point in taking precautions
Much easier to just drink enough so there is no chance of that happening.
But then I am in UK where milk is easily obtained in 2 pint or less packages and is all long term - over a week. It is harder to gat 4 int or gallon containers which I think are more common in the US.
In the US, the way milk is sold, is that larger amounts cost less. In other words, the 1/2-gallon container, buy two of those, and it costs significantly more than a single 1-gallon container. It gets even worse for quarts. But I seldom buy in the 1-gallon container as it will generally spoil before I've used it all, so there isn't any savings there for me.
>In other words, the 1/2-gallon container, buy two of those, and it costs significantly more than a single 1-gallon container.
Except sometimes the 1/2 gallons will be randomly on sale where you can get like 3 of them for the price of a gallon. Milk economics makes no sense to me. But yeah, it's usually cheaper to buy more than you need and just throw it out if you don't use it, as is the American way.
I batch cook and freeze meals, and some of them look similar (sauce and chicken vs sauce and pork) and I want to eat the older stuff first. There are also some products that are recommended to be disposed of within X days of opening, which fall well before their best by date.