To wonder how I'm supposed to handle a mil food sell by date issue....

[MilaMae]

without
a) seriously pissing off said mil
b) making my dfamily ill

Just been for a weekend at mil's.Dp and I were both concerned as a hell of a lot of food out of sell by date kept getting served up-repeatedly. Now I'm no fuss pot and fruit/veg I have no problem with (although 3 day old furry melon is hard to get down) but cream,deli products, baked goods etc 3 or 4 days past concern me, especially as these were the only dates we could see. Very concerned re meat,shellfish and eggs,I had my suspicions but couldn't rifle through bins for packaging.

Also I got halfway through some sausagemeat to find it pink inside,decidedly nervous as to wether it was in date pre-cooking.

I felt queasy the whole time and dp,ds and I had the runs. Dd and the other ds didn't.

As far as I can see I'm in a no win situation.If I say anything there will be one almighty damaging upset, if I don't one of us is going to get really ill.

Interestingly mil used to warn us re the same subject when we used to visit her mother. Money definitely isn't a factor.

Has anybody else had to handle this?

My MIL started doing this, her judgement on what was appropriate had changed. Unfortunately within the year other things made me realise she had dementia.

Sorry proably not what you want to hear.

Perhaps your MIL just needs a little bit of educating. A book on the subject perhaps, as a gift?

Mayo bought in a jar doesn't have raw egg in it though.

I mean the stuff you buy from the supermarket.

My nan is like this. When I was younger (say, about ten-ish?) we kids sat down at hers for lunch and had sandwiches followed by a packet of crisps.

I opened my packet of salt and vinegar; they smelled a bit weird. The first one I put in my mouth tasted like walnuts. They were three and a half years out of date. None of us had the crisps after that, and my Dad and my Aunt subtly threw them out.

Then there was the time that she was in hospital and I was looking for icing sugar. We found packets of something (I can't remember what now) priced in "d". She has a six fooot long chest freezer and even my Dad only ever remembers seeing the top layer rotate. I think it's that rationing mentality. Some people can let go of it, some people can't. My nan can't; she hoards everything.

OP, does your MIL hang on to other stuff than food? If so, it might be a case of rifling through the cupboards when she's out, and trying to chuck a tin here and there. If she's got that 'use it up' mentality, there isn't anything I can think of that will make her change.

snowbear4000 - do we have the same mil? Cries of 'This needs eating up' as she gets out several small tupperware boxes from the fridge, and bowls with plates resting on top,with frugal portions of raw veg, hard cheese bits, or maybe a quarter of a baked potato, some flakes of funny coloured tuna...and yes, we are packed off home with a piece of pie (for the 5 of us), 3 runner beans and an assortment of strawberries with their furry coats on. Oh joy.

Grin and bear it OP. Or find an allergy for your Dcs, and bring food for them next time. Or beat her at her own game and bring huge portions of dishes - explaining they need eating up.

YANBU at all about shellfish etc. But - you will weaken your case with MIL if you say what you said in your OP - a sausage being pink inside has nothing to do with use-by dates! And the risks for meat that's gone off, and pork that's not cooked properly, aren't the same.

Mind you I sympathize a lot - I just use common sense myself and do ignore dates if it's things like eggs, but I would be very careful with shellfish and would certainly use the sniff test! I grew up with my dad making a heavy moral virtue out of 'finishing the old before starting the new' ... including scraping the mould off the lid of the cream and declaring it was 'just a bit sharp' rather than disgustingly off! [boak] He still insists on saving 'good' wine (ie., over 5 quid for years, then drinking the corked bottle).

MilaMae - perhaps my DM could come with you on your next trip: she believes firmly in having everything "on a low light" for between 3 and 7 days. I doubt cockroaches could survive in her kitchen. She seems, also, to believe in the thermo-nuclear properties of her microwave, once attempting to defrost a loaf of bread by placing said loaf in the microwave for 20 minutes on High. The smell lasted for days. The microwave didn't.

(Quick hijack: FrogetyFrog, remember this phrase for spelling: "Don't I Always Really regret Having One Extra Aloo" - 1st letters spell out Diarrhoea. I have others for syphillis & chlamydia... Any takers?)

sell by dates didn't come in to being until after 1974, I know this as I found a packet soup at my dad's dated 1974 - not sell by date or use by date - just dated

I wonder what people did before sell by dates and use by dates - sea food you should know whether of or not when cooking- as it will sometime be off and supermarkets have still got it as ok, meat aswell you shoudl be able to tell if it is off without relieing on a date stamped on it.

Most foods will last past sell by dates by more than 3-4 days.

Eggs you can place in a jug of water to see whether it is ok or not - no need to through away if the water test says its ok - why through away good food

My grandmother once served us doughnutty things (the kind that are soaked in sugar syrup, plaited and have a glace icing topping - indestructible, basically).
On the bottom of each? A lovely green layer of mould. Must have been YEARS out of date...

The sell by date on packets of crisps always falls on a Satrday.

I've seen my mil eat cream cheese from a tub that had a black 'beard' I kid you not, of long spidery mould spores about 1/2 long!

When I leapt across the kitchen and yelled as she put it to her mouth she just shrugged and carried on.

I've recently bought a food thermometer. Not the sort of crap you buy in supermarkets for a tenner than has error bars as wide as a motorway and a probe you can't get anywhere useful, but one which comes with a traceable calibration certificate and a long, needlelike sensor. I bought it to distinguish between very rare and rare, and to do more accurate jam making, but if you are nervous about food, being able to confirm it's been heated to 75C (which is the usual safety point) is nice.

I used to worry about thick sausages (high likelihood of contamination, difficult to confirm the temperature without burning them to a crisp), reheating stews with large chicken pieces in them (you end up boiling them to death), but now I don't.

Google thermapen.

My great aunt was like this, and it was early stages of dementia.
might be something to consider, sorry