Hopelessly out of date?

[HenleyMum]

Family supper this evening: I finally broke away from the pasta and pesto theme and cooked something middle class containing Chinese five spice seasoning.

My smugness knows no bounds.

At least, it did until two minutes ago when I discovered my jar of seasoning is 15 years out of date.

Is this a record?

Well 15 years is fairly remarkable but dried spices probably just lose a bit of flavour. I was clearing out my mum's fridge recently for her and discovered some little tubs of fruit purée with a best before date of 2004. She obviously thought they were such a good idea that three years later she went out and bought some more! Vom - I didn't open them before binning.

A few years ago - 2006 ish, my mother made Christmas pud. She is not a very good cook. It was disgusting. Mum admitted that the suet may have been out of date, because it had come from my gm's cupboard when she died. In 1989. When we looked at the packet, the price was in shillings!

Eek - what is it with that generation? My mother is the same! Won't chuck anything away. (Mind you, I clearly can't talk...)