DH and DS are pair of wussies.

[Oneeata]

I made a huge pan of soup yesterday and IMHO may have been the nicest I've made in years. DH and DS both agreed. We had it with crusty buns for late dinner yesterday, they both took some for lunch in food flasks at work today and then DH warmed the whole pan back up and made some huuuuuge dumplings for dinner tonight - I can't make dumplings for love nor money and his are delish. I then made the schoolgirl error of saying "not bad going for a pan full of mouldy old veg" now they're both not speaking to me, both retching, saying I'm disgusting, I've poissened them etc and both convinced they're going to be ill with d&v. DS has even taken the "sicky" bowl and a towel up to bed with him.
I'm not going to be able to make my beautiful mouldy veg soup ever again hahaha.
They are both drama queens with best before dates and I often hide dates from them, I'm of the mind if it doesn't smell rancid then it's fair game you're not going to die.
Wished I'd said not bad for a pan full of slightly on the turn veg instead 🤣😅. In all seriousness though I have to give myself props for stretching a few odds n ends over 3 meals - it's mid skint month after all.

YANBU - They need to grow a pair, you're a wonderful wife and mother feeding your family.
YABU - Your an evil witch forcing both to eat scraps from the bottom of the fridge.

Im in two minds.
I'm not overly hung up on sell by dates or best before dates.
But to me there is more to food than how it tastes.
Theres nutritìnal value.
Fresh vegetables have more vitamins than tired yellowing limp vegetables.
So why would you want to fill yours and your family's bodies with food that has next to no nutrition in it?

@wildraisins but some cheese is aged for years, so how does that work?

You’re a woman after my own heart OP, I hate food waste and try to use up everything. No-one in my house is ever ill from anything, I reckon we’ve built up a hardy resistance!

Revolting, @Bailegangaire?

If I tell dh we’re having dustbin soup tonight, his reaction will invariably be ‘yum!’.

I once made a batch of dustbin for dds and some local friends when it had snowed, they’d all been off sledging in the park, and came back half frozen.

A few days later one of said friends (Spanish mother, German father) came and asked whether I could give her mum the recipe for my ‘garbage’ soup!😂

I had to tell her it was always a ‘whatever I have’ so different every time.

Your turn of phrase would put me off too!

@GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER

Your family needs training! ‘Dustbin’ soup (my DM’s term) has always been a popular thing in this house. That carrot that’s gone a bit limp and is looking sorry for itself, a leek that’s well past its proud youth (but fine once you strip the outside leaves off), any potatoes gone a bit flabby and gaily sprouting away, not to mention that last, lonely dried up bit of ham or rasher of bacon you’d forgotten about... Plus of course that little dish of leftover spaghetti from 3 days ago, snip snip, in it goes.... Onion, celery and stock (cube or home made) are essential for any ‘dustbin’ of mine, though.

Your mother is my hero @GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER 😊

[quote Labobo]@wildraisins but some cheese is aged for years, so how does that work?[/quote]
Obviously it is certain types of cheese which are aged safely in particular conditions - not just left at the back of the fridge

You shouldn't have said that. That would put me off too!

Should add that my ‘dustbin’ is never entirely composed of past-its-best though - some of whatever relatively fresh veg I have will always go in, plus red lentils, pearl barley, a little mini pasta, etc.

DP loves the fact that I sling any old thing into soup & am creative with leftovers.

His ex would chuck out anything that wasn't eaten on the day it was made.

My Mum is an excellent cook, but is slapdash about use-by dates (and has filled many buckets with sick as a result), and is also quite experimental.
I absolutely hated it as a child, when she’d serve something, then “confess” half way through that it wasn’t what it look like - had some random ingredient, or contained the mouldy leftover xyz that had been lurking in the fridge. It put me off eating her food, and I haven’t eaten anything she’s prepared since I left home 30+ years ago. I just can’t face the “reveal” afterwards.

Nothing wrong with bottom of the fridge soup

Can't believe people eat furry food 🤢 that's beyond tight!

@wildraisins

Dairy can be on the turn a while before you can actually smell/ taste it, so I think you are being daft with the cheese.

I learned that the hard way by getting very ill and now I am cautious and won't use them after a few days beyond their use by. Fruit and veg though is absolutely fine.

Can you really get ill from eating out of date cheese? Also how would butter, milk or cream be "off" before it actually tastes off?

Soft cheese I would be cautious with but not hard cheese.

You were a fool to tell them!

I can't bear people who are fussy about best before dates and have no common sense (or functioning sense of smell, apparently). It's a weird, waste-fetishising fixation that shows a complete incapacity for independent thought, or ability to function as an adult.

Right, glad to have got that off my chest!

You could tell them a long time later, in a more general 'well actually, you've been eating perfectly good veg, that's well past it's sell by date, for the last six months and never complained once!' way.

@Hurtandupset2 your DD sounds like me 😂 I remember my friend making me some tuna pasta in tomato sauce, it was bloody delicious, even went back for seconds! It was just after I had finished this second helping she told me her secret ingredient was anchovies 🤢

Did the same thing this Christmas with a jar of stuffed peppers. Thought they were stuffed with just ricotta. Lovely. Finished the jar and when DP was cleaning it he noticed they were stuffed with ricotta, tuna and anchovies. An abomination!

There is probably a lot of food out there I love, but my stubbornness and unwillingness to try any food that comes from the sea (except tuna) means that I was always refuse to try them!

But it sounds to me as though your soup was made from perfectly good ingredients. You hadn't actually included any mouldy or off bits.

I would find your wording off-putting, because it implies that the mouldy bits are in the soup.

I've been in this country for 11 years now and I still find the concept of sticking best before dates on veg so weird!

I'm with most people here, otherwise what a waste!

I'm sorry but was it actually all visibly mouldy? Or just about to turn? Big difference.

I'll eat almost anything with any date but mold really gets me for some reason and freaks me right out. Disgusting.

Fruit and veg and other plant based foods don’t really have a “used by” date - it’s really a matter of checking if they look ok and cutting off any brown bits etc. People used to keep certain fruit and vegetables for months over winter and they are fine as long as they are chilled.

@lottiegarbanzo

You were a fool to tell them!

I can't bear people who are fussy about best before dates and have no common sense (or functioning sense of smell, apparently). It's a weird, waste-fetishising fixation that shows a complete incapacity for independent thought, or ability to function as an adult.

Right, glad to have got that off my chest!

You could tell them a long time later, in a more general 'well actually, you've been eating perfectly good veg, that's well past it's sell by date, for the last six months and never complained once!' way.

No, there’s a long way between being (1) someone who erroneously believes something automatically rots at midnight the day of the best before date, and (2) someone who isn’t ok with, say, — something some people on here do — using very past their best foods, or meat bones that have been on a whole bunch of people’s dinner plates to make soup.

It’s not that I’m afraid it’s going to make me sick, as the cooking process should put paid to that — it’s the idea that nauseates me.

I think mostly because we were very poor when I was small, and had no fridge, and it was, until my mother married in, a house where all the cooking was a rough and ready affair done by men in their sixties (my grandad and great-uncle), with very poor hygiene and frequently semi-rancid meat.

To this day, I’m easily nauseated. I could never pick up something that fell on the floor for even a second and eat it, and the joke stories on here about people serving up turkeys the dog got at turn my stomach.

This doesn’t mean I’m wussy, or fussy, or waste food.

A housemate once said how lovely it was that I always presented her a yoghurt or chocolate mousse or whatever with the lid already removed and a spoon stuck in.

In reality, I was usually hiding the bb date because she definitely measured high on that particular wussieometer.

Bit past its best veg or actually mouldy veg? There's a difference!

I keep stilton and brie like you do Red Leicester 😂
Stilton from supermarkets is the best few months after use by date.

Wusses😂 Though you should specify it wasn't even turning yet