Fact: Dates on food packages are intended to ensure quality — not safety. They aren’t required by law. (Some exceptions exist, such as infant formula.) So what do they mean? Sell by. This date tells the grocer how long to display the product for sale. You should buy the product before the date is passed. Best if used by (or before).
Some of our food was so old the “sell by date” was in Roman Numerals!
Best If Used By/Before: This is a quality assurance date and serves as a “suggestion” for when the taste and quality of food are at their peak. It is not a purchase or safety date.
Use By: This is the suggested date by when you should eat the food. But just because it’s a day or two past the use-by date doesn’t mean that consuming it will make you sick, although you should evaluate the quality of the food yourself after this time. It is not a safety date, except when used on infant formula.
Sell By: This is not a safety date, but rather a date for retailers that helps them determine how long an item should remain on the shelf. According to the IFT, “one-third of a food’s shelf-life remains after the sell-by date for the consumer to use at home.”
With Colleen gone, we needed a latte from Dunkin’, and we decided to send Scout. The phrase “café latte” literally means “coffee milk.” He forgot the flavor we asked for and came home with something a little strange.
Note to self: Do NOT send Scout to the store!
We worked all day putting the shelves/cupboards back together. Mary finally asked me to stop helping so she could think about where everything should go. Otherwise, I would be standing by ary with an arm full of stuff making her go too fast. I went into “Honey Do” mode; when she says something, I do it.
I can hardly wait for tomorrow; the catheter bites the dust. Dr. Ryan called from Detroit and said we could remove it tonight; Mary has the experience and knows how. We decided to wait because we had to see the local urologist anyway to make follow-up appointments.
After he hung up, MAry was trying to remember how it was done! We are going to the urologist for sure.
Oh, dear me! What is going to happen??
By 3:00 PM, we were getting close with a lot of “stuff” going to the garage! We found four cheese graters, three juicers, and a myriad of things we did not know where they came from! A museum will be happy someday!
Wow! Life will be a lit easier now!
We found several “science projects”; some as old as fifteen years! They got donated to the trash can some of which exploded upon impact!
At around 4:30 PM, Scout started yapping loudly, not like him. I went outside and was blinded by a flash of lightning and a loud clap of thunder; we have a thunderstorm! I checked my iPhone for lightning; it was coming our way!
“Scout, go get the kite!!!”
We got 1/2″ of rain in 15 minutes! As my dad would say, “It is raining like a cow pissing on a flat rock!” I love those Arkansas sayings!
It cleared up in half an hour, and we went back to watching the Gilmore Girls and finishing up the pantry redesign.
We walked the backyard to make sure the new garden was draining well; it was!
We called Jan to make sure all was well at her house; she made it through the downpour with ease and only called the handsome sheriff’s office five times, looking to be rescued by that handsome officer Jones!
We crashed at 9:00 PM. It is a big day tomorrow.
