To make a cheeky comment to my friend about this?!

[feedmefudge]

Last night I hosted drinks and nibbles for a couple of friends; one of whom we haven’t seen in over a decade. I bought wine and nice wee snacks for us.
The local friend I see more regularly brought a box of posh crackers. Looking at the box, I could see that they are 6 months out of date. Not only that, but the date was covered with a weird sticky stuff that was murder to remove from my kitchen surface. Clearly the box had come from the deepest corner of her kitchen cupboard!
Wealthy friend, money no object. And to be honest, it grates a bit.
I’m tempted to make a light-hearted comment which shows that it hasn’t gone unnoticed.
A bit passive-aggressive maybe, but AIBU? And any funny suggestions of what it could be?!

It might've been where a sticker had been, a reduced one perhaps. Maybe OP eats the box and the packaging outside of the crackers, I can see why it would bother me too if I intended to do that.

You could have just given them back at the end of the evening as you 'hadn't needed to open them.'

I vote for sympathy. I've found it insulting on occasions when people with means and who should know better have palmed off shoddy rubbish on me that the rules say you're expected to thank them for. And I have also observed that these same people have no hesitation in rudely rejecting anything they think not good enough for them.

Don't waste your breath or any more thought on it. If it happens again, raise an eyebrow, say "thank you" neutrally, and don't serve stale crackers (or plastic ham, or rot-gut wine, or weird holiday peaches in local liqueurs, or any other leftovers that they have decided will do) to your nicer guests.

Don't retaliate, either. How you treat people - the gifts you offer them as well as what you say to them - shows what you are like and not what they are like.

A date on a cracker box….. I mean… you’re her frenemy, right?

I’m imagining the friend as some kind of eccentric aristocrat who wears clothes that have been handed down for several generations, drives a battered old Land Rover, has a pack of smelly dogs lying by the aga in a huge crumbling mansion, and doesn’t give a fuck about out of date crackers.
She sounds fab!

Why are you eating the box and packaging 🤔

I am a watered down version of this. I'm not wealthy, but have several assets and am not poor. Most of my clothes are second hand, I wear several of my grandmother's frocks for example and my car is a 2007 model with a big dent in the back (I could afford to have it fixed but the part to replace where the dent is is hard to come by and I haven't got around to having a look recently) I only have one dog however but my house still has the flowery 60s-70s carpets that were in when I bought it, and the bathroom is carpeted. If it ain't broke don't fix it I say😂

I wasn't saying I would-more so that the box being sticky does not affect its contents whatsoever so it is bemusing to me why the OP even gave it a second thought, unless she was indeed about to eat the packaging.

I'm guilty of saving posh food for special occasions. Probably what she did, and didn't even think to check the date. It will have been a best before anyway, and the crackers would have been fine.
If she'd brought out of date cream crackers, you'd be rightfully miffed.

I would always check the date on a food item I’d had for a while that I was thinking of taking to a friend’s party, and if it was out of date I’d change my plan and get something else. I wouldn’t just think “oh that’ll do” because I value my friends.

Hmm..I wouldn't mention it. Maybe invite her over for a cuppa soon and serve her some of her Crackers 😆. She what she says/does

I’ve found my tribe!

Only on mumsnet is a person so odd as to check the date on a box of crackers, complain about it and want to passive aggressively embarrass a friend. If they are a nice/fancy box of crackers and they didn’t know about the date then why not bring them. You sound pretty awful TBH. With friends like you who needs enemies.

Sometimes, when people are popping over to a friends home, they have forgotten to purchase whatever little bits and pieces they may want to take over. If my friends judged me on how many times I've provided 'nibbles', I'd have none left. Life is busy, for most people, and top of the range, in-date crackers, may not have been a priority for her that week. At least she showed up.

Op if you really wanted to say something you should have said it there and then. You could have just said the crackers are out of date if you was worried about eating them, no need for a dig. But the event has passed now.. just forget it.

It may have been an oversight on her part as you said it was really difficult to get the sticker off that was covering the sell by date.

Or she knew and wasn't bothered, in which case in the pass agg stakes you are well matched

I would just put them in the bin.
I would not give them another thought either.

If she was really your friend and you get on well enough to spend time in each other's company and homes, surely you could have had a laugh about it at the time. E.g. Bloody 'ell Kath, did you get these in your Christmas stocking?"
She'd have laughed and told you the story of how they got sticky.
You'd have laughed and it would be another funny story in your friendship.

You're not really good friends with her are you.

Honestly she may appear wealthy- we are the same- but are in debt from fertility treatment- and count everything that goes into our super market shop and go without. I wouldn’t assume they are and she was probably embarrassed but didn’t want to pull out

I wouldn't say anything but I would store this information away for the future as something I know about her.

Ha ha. Put it in the file. That you keep in the basement. Behind the chest freezer that you never open….

Assuming she's not usually one to do something like this, I'd chalk it up as a random odd thing that happened, and then forget about it.

It's not worth damaging a long-standing friendship over a box of crackers.

Unless of course, there's a massive drip-feed coming, and she's actually got a long rap sheet for stunts like this.

She probably just remembered she had some nice crackers and brought them. I might have looked at the date if I knew I had had them for a while, but it might not have crossed my mind. It would be very embarrassing for you to tell her. Were they nice, if they had gone soft you should have said at the time and you could probably have had a laugh about it.

It would be incredibly crass to say anything and would reflect far more on you than it would on her in the eyes of everyone there. In the words of Michelle Obama 'They go low, we go high'.

its just some crackers. No one was forced to eat them.