Recently I was offended by a friend's rejection of my three-month-past "best buy" date of my 1.7oz dulce de leche spread six-pack. "I'm not feeding [daughter] expired milk," she said, with a chuckle. One might have even interpreted the chuckle as smug, if one were feeling particularly sensitive in relation to her expired sugar products.
"Fine!" I said, louder and shriller than necessary. "I'll eat them!"
And guess what! I just ate one and it was delicious. I used a teeny tiny spoon from the package, which was both adorable and functional. Aside from the impending sugar crash, I am certain I will be A-OKAY, suffering no ill effects from eating barely "expired" cooked milk and sugar.
I'm getting worked up again. Which leads me to the point of this post: why was I offended?
I do not believe in expiration/"best by" dates and this challenges by beliefs.
I've been known to eat bread well past the "best by" date, though to be fair I freeze all my bread. Perhaps a bit less reasonable, I'll cut the fuzzy part off a block of hard cheese and eat the rest. Definitely less reasonable, I'll scrape the moldy part off a blob of soft cheese, eat the rest, and lie about it while discussing expiration dates with friends months after.
I once read that expiration dates for things like bottled water are only printed because certain states require consumables to expire. I think I saw that on Reddit and I'm not in the mood to find a real source, so you're just going to have to take my word for it as I did with the original internet stranger. I even have a vague memory of packages having different expiration dates for different locations. That's how laws are! Why? I don't know. I'm not a law scientist.
ALSO (and this is super important) "best by" means just that: BEST BY. You can still eat the caramel, my friend. Anyone who tells me different is just wrong. Any attempt at a real discussion would undoubtedly involve actual scientific data, which I'm not interested in supplying. It's just not worth the time. I'm happy with my maybe-old cheese.
Okay, yes, food can and does expire. I am not denying that. But I'm not going to blindly follow silly things like printed dates or spores that weren't there yesterday.
I felt silly and embarrassed for offering old food to someone who so clearly is above old food, and my reaction was to lash out.
Too good for some expired milk, are we?! Plenty of people eat out of garbage cans and they're FINE. OKAY? FINE. I'll eat it myself!! Your loss!
A combination of spending most of my time in my house for the past seven months and being on anti-depressants has protected me from feeling really any form of embarrassment for quite some time. Nowadays I just sort of exist alongside my husband and the pets, not caring if I say something stupid or forget which foods are socially acceptable. Jason wouldn't judge me for eating a piece of toast that fell on the floor, and the cats and dog would envy me for eating a piece of toast that fell on the floor.
This friend rejecting and chuckling at my offer of food that I considered perfectly acceptable forced me to, very quickly, question what I have become. Was that not a normal food to offer? Was it not kind? Thoughtful, even?? What else am I doing that might not be considered socially acceptable? Are tacos still popular? Is water still okay? We're still against single-use straws, right? Socks still go on feet, yes?
I'm looking forward to the day--if ever it arrives--when we can all readjust to being together after spending so long in isolation. What habits developed in quarantine will awkwardly show up in the real world? Nose-picking? Wedgie-picking? Not wearing pants? How many office workers will sneak booze into their travel mugs, after all those months of mixing a drink in their kitchens at noon? Fortunately I've been able to come to the office at least once a week, giving me a weak grasp on reality and some small semblance of normalcy. This isn't to say I'm not used to napping in my comfy bed during lunch, just that I haven't forgotten how to tie my shoes. When things return to "normal" I'll still eat questionable food and I'll... probably be worse at hiding it than before.
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