So supposing you were sluttish enough to have a packet of jelly in your cupboard

[LadyGlencoraPalliser]

with a best before date sometime in 2005. Would you use it?

NO. Im a best before date freak, anything over a few days and its gone.

BIN IT.

Yep, I'd give it a go

I'm not usually bother with best before dates if it's a small margin, but 4 years, might be pushing it!

Bothered, not bother.

I don't mind using some stuff within 6 months e.g jelly, previously unopened fruit and so on, but I would not touch that jelly. That's 4 years out of date.

no. Four whole years? no, not even I

I think 4 years is stretching it a bit, even for a "best before"

But I was thinking, it's not that perishable really. I mean obviously use by dates on fresh food are there for a reason, but what would go wrong with jelly?

If it was powders, and not the jellyish stuff ... yeah, I would.

gelatine is meat based- surely it would have started to degrade and wouldn't hold? plus all the colours and stuff wouldn't be right

There is powder too, Coldtits, but it is only a few months out of date so OF COURSE I am going to use that.
Have had a BIG clearout of kitchen cupboards today.

Is it cubes? It's probably gone all hard. Tbh, I doubt it tastes of anything now whether you could safely use it or not.

if it looks fine and smells fine - use it

Is packet jelly sluttish btw?

I used to massively envy my friend who got 2 cubes of jelly in her packed lunch every day. What decadent luxury (to an eight year old)

seriously - its 35p in tesco.

I'm with MayorNaze.

there's a difference between Best Before and Use By - Use By means that the food will likely have gone off after that date and you really shouldn't go too far past those dates.

Best Before just means that it will probably taste better if you use it before then, but not that it's dangerous afterwards.

use your judgment - does it look ok? has it changed colour? does it smell ok? has it got preservatives in the ingredients, which would probably keep it from going off even through a holocaust?

I wouldn't.

If it was a child, it'd still be a preschooler. That tips the balance for me. KS2 jelly is off the menu, EYFS fine: KS1 jelly on a particularly bad day.

isn't eating a cube of jelly a day meant to be fab for your hair and nails?

or should i be posting that on the useless tips thread[ grin]

I think the sluttishness refers to the age, not the presence of jelly.

I hope so anyway, as I have two packets of (in-date) jelly in my cupboard

if you have jelly in your cupboard are you considered a slut?

what about tins of custard?

do you have to lounge around in maribou slippers, flirting with handymen and drinking brandy at 7am?

Ah, gotcha. I was thinking maybe making up jelly with leaf gelatine and freshly squeezed fruit juice was de rigeur and I had been Letting Myself Go.

make the jelly.

and serve it with tinned custard.

and some of those sponges that last for years that old people use to make trifle.

call it slut surpise

Following the out of date theme...I slathered my youngest son's nose in vaseline today as it was red-raw due to excessive snottage.

I've just noticed that the vaseline was out of date in 2001.