"expiration date" news and stories

Silly us. We thought the "use by" date stickers on food were designed to stop us from purchasing rancid products. Turns out they're for the convenience of the store managers.

According to the Brooklyn Paper, an irate customer of a Brooklyn Heights Key Food grocery store notified authorities when they found a new use-by sticker slapped on top of an expired 11-day one, on a package of D'Artagnan chicken.

When the New York Department of Agriculture and Markets was contacted about the incident, they didn't seem bothered.

"'Sell by' dates are nothing but a tool for store managers," said Jessica Ziehm spokesman for the Department. "It's not illegal to re-date or re-package, though they're still required to sell safe, wholesome products. We went there and found no problems."

Huh? It's not illegal to re-date packages but stores are still required to sell "safe, wholesome" products... Riddle me that!

Over time, some of the dry goods in the pantry will expire, from Bisquick to canned cranberry jelly. Most of these things will still be safe to eat in the weeks immediately following their “best by” date, but it is best to try and use them up before reaching that point. Spring cleaning is a great time to sort through all those cans and mixes and figure out what to do with them. Soups and chili recipes are a good start for most pantry favorites.

Another prevalent pantry item is chocolate chips. The Tollhouse recipe is a classic and one of the best, most reliable recipes there is, so keeping a bag or two of chocolate morsels on hand is common. All of these chips have a “best by” date on them, after which point they will still be usable, but their flavor will begin to decrease. I happen to have a lot of seasonal chips around – red and green white chocolate chips for Christmas and red and pink white chocolate chips for Valentine’s day – in addition to the specialty Milk Chocolate and Caramel Swirl Chips pictured above. Just use them in place of the regular chips in the Tollhouse recipe, or one of the other recipe on the back of the bags. It sounds obvious to say it here, but would we ever have leftover chips if we just disregarded the holiday that they are “supposed” to be for and used them whenever we wanted a batch of cookies?