My Life In Her Hands

I believe there are some readers of this site that share my partner's dereliction of common sense when it comes to sell-by-dates on food stuffs.

When one considers that she is actually a trained caterer, I find her frankly cavalier attitude to expiration-date russian-roulette somewhat, er, cavalier!

There has been some debate in our household recently re; the capacity of our fridge, and whether we should spend real money on buying a larger receptical.

I am of the argument that we could first consider whether everything in the fridge should be there, and whether she may want to finish one bottle of wine before opening another.

Anyway the opportunity presented itself yesterday to execute a fridge audit, where I examined the contents unit by unit to establish each items validity in the precious cold-space.

I admit that I only found seven items beyond their date stamp, and that I was unable to convince her that one of these items, the most recent, a jar of mayonnaise dated June 2010, should be thrown. It has since returned to the fridge.

Now, as I consider mayonnaise as salmonella in a jar anyway, I won't be going near it. However, there in lies the irony, neither will she, due to her belief that a salad is a worthy but pointless exercise.

I will therefore need to wait another year before I get to eject the toxic hazard from our midst.

As for the remaining six items, the top three were:

In third place: Anchovies; Feb 2008

In second place: Discover Salsa dip: December 2004

And finally in first place, from the twentieth century:

Safeway Red Onion Jelly: March 2000.

Yes, it's been out of date for a decade now, and she's brought it from her old flat, via my old flat to the house we moved into six years ago!

This is what I have to live with.