I hate waste but....

Mind you, when I went through my paretns' cupboards and fridge they were a real health hazard! I too rely on the nose in most cases and keep far more in the fridge than people used to as kitchens are warmer than in the "olden" daus. Oh for a proper larder. I alos freeze things right away (if suitable) in case I don't get round to eating within the period. I too hate waste, but it happens.

I am appalled my how much food my daughter wastes! They do not seem to use up leftovers for next days lunch. As Whenim put it, "she didn't get that from me."
Most very out of date tinned or jars of stuff wont hurt you but the flavour does suffer a bit and oily stuff goes a bit rancid.

Stans I think I'm having a thick moment, but what is PD as referred to in your post?

Devon Numpty!

I'll back stansgran on the sour milk making the best scones, except that I use sour cream. Not the stuff that is sold as soured cream but fresh cream that has been left in my fridge and forgotten about and then found again before it has walked away on its own.

Perhaps 'modern' milk doesn't sour so well because it has been homogenised as well as pasteurised? just a thought.

I know that the few occasions when I have encountered solid milk bags it did not smell at all like sour cream or yoghurt. Lactobacilli good other bacilli (possibly) bad.

I'm with JessM on anything preserved with vinegar or sugar and with all those of you who rely on noses or common sense to tell you what is safe to eat. I have eaten yoghurt well after its use by date and am still here. As for fruit and vegetables with a sell-by date - when do they think the potatoes were harvested or the apples grown? It doesn't happen all year round and so we are, as we always have been, reliant on good storage methods so that we can have these things for most, now all, of the year. Mr when came home from Tesco with a real bargain one year on Christmas Eve; a large bag of potatoes with a sell-by date of 24th December for 25p! We used them for weeks and in the meantime Tesco was selling potatoes, possibly from the same farms and picked at the same time, but in bags with January or February dates on them for many times that price.

The problem with pasteurised milk is that ALL the bacteria good and bad are destroyed by the pasteurisation. So if you leave it to go sour you don't know whether the souring has been caused by the good or bad bugs. Probably would be OK in scones as it would have been cooked?

phoenix, I could be wrong but I think stansgran meant Parkinson's Disease.

I do think we are ruled too much by 'sell by' and 'best before' my DDiL is always sending things round for my chucks eg tomatoes, apples, grapes, which are perfectly ok and I wash and use. And I make my own buttermilk for scones (to me auld Scottish granny's recipe) and own cottage cheese. I scrape mould off cheese and jam etc.
BUT there surely must come a point when those part-used jars in my fridge which were opened months, years? ago start to become a bit iffy? Besides they take up too much room.
My plea is where I can find small jars.
Thanks for your suggestion jodi I'll try that.
And someone, was it move suggested freezing in cubes. Might try that too. Trouble is I can never remember what's in freezer bags as it is and my labelling system is not fit for purpose. I defrosted what I thought was a nice homemade soup yesterday for lunch only to find it was a turkey curry. Yuk!

The Wonderful Man doesn't 'believe in' sell by dates - but is very much into the 'sniff' test which a very technical evaluation of 'gone orfness'.

My daughter bought us some local honey for christmas. The date 'best before' said march 2013. She rang the supplier to see if this was correct and was told '' we have to put a date on the honey but actually it will keep for at least 20 years!'' I went to make a baked syrup pudding yesterday and sent OH to the garage store for the next tin of syrup. When he brought it in I checked the BB date. Lo, and behold, 2007. To use or not to use, that is the question? Actually I chickened out and made a jam one instead.

Use it Hunt. Syrup and honey will last for years.

Glad I'm not the only one harassed by the sell-by-date police in the shape of my two daughters. At Christmas DD1 put two packets of Out Of Date cereal in the bin, not realising that they were sitting by the back door ready to feed to the birds (Why would they have been by the back door otherwise?) At New Year DD2 binned the loaf which I had taken fresh out of the freezer that morning because it's use by date was past. It was the last loaf, the shops were closed, so I had to set too and bake bread . Both DD's are sticklers for sticking to use by dates and throw out masses of perfectly edible food at their homes.

I try to tell them that when I was a child we had masses of stored food from garden and allotment. Apples, onions and potatoes were stored in the shed and lasted the whole winter, we had enough pickled beetroot, jam and marmalade to last a whole year. Only my father took bottled sauces or mustard so one bottle would also last a year. None of this was kept in the fridge - BECAUSE WE DIDN'T HAVE ONE [SHOCK] The enormous pot of soup would last 3 or 4 days and was fine as long as brought to boil each day. We sometimes had a huge ham which seemed to last forever with a few slices cut and fried every other day and oatmeal (for porrage, oatcakes and sprinkling on potatoes) came in a small sack but I cannot recall any of these things 'going off'. Mind you our house was usually at fridge like temperatures throughout the winter.

Yes, jess, well I did mention the sniff test earlier in the thread. It's usually pretty easy to tell if something is safe to eat if you just use a bit of sense (with both kinds of meaning of 'sense').

G23 – a shower thought:if that frozen/defrosted loaf was still in its wrapper, couldn't you have hoicked it out of the bin and used it? I think I would have. Not that my daughters do things like that, fortunately. They wouldn't dare! [dragon emoticon]

Next time, leave a note beside the defrosting loaf, perhaps: "The date is irrelevant! It has been in the freezer!"

Sorry if I was repeating a point you had made bags .
deeda pasteurisation is not sterilisation. It reduces bacterial count and makes it reasonable safe.
I agree that honey and syrup should last pretty much for ever. Due to the osmosis. Bacteria and moulds are living cells and consequently contain a little water. They are enclosed in semi permeable membranes. Put them in a concentrated sugar solution and the water will be drawn out of the bacterium into the sugar. Cellular processes would be brought to a halt as they all require water. Hence bacteria cannot breed in such a concentrated sugary environment. The passing of time may crystallise the honey/syrup but still a hostile environment for microbes.
Spores could survive in this environment - in adversity the microbe forms a tough shell and hunkers down until conditions improve. So the honey is not necessarily sterile but you would have to add a lot of water before the spores came back to life and were capable of doing harm. Just for good measure a lot of commercial honey is pasteurised as well isn't it.
The spores however can very occasionally come back to life - and can, it is believed to have caused some cases of botulism in babies. This could happen in honey of any age. So us grans should not dip those dummies in honey whatever the sell by date on the jar.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/10225536

Thanks for the honey info, jess. I'd heard that it wasn't safe to give babies honey (never did anyhow, but...) but didn't understand why. Now I do

What about honey that is cooked in something? Is that alright? Not that you'd be giving that to tiny babies either.

Going back to what glamma said about putting sauces into little pots and freezing them. This seems to be an excellent idea, and I know you have a catering background, glamma. Surely this is a safe thing to do?

I don't know for sure Bags but it would be some kickass spore that could survive being baked at 200deg C wouldn't it. Pasteurisation is around 70deg
UHT over 100deg. no truth in rumour that it is an acronym for Unusually Horrible Taste

Something practical nanado
mini jars
This is what you wanted wasn't it rather than the temperature of various food preserving techniques?

Oops! Pressed POST instead of PREVIEW. Meant to say they do lots of set of mini mustards, horseradish, etc.

Didn't they find some honey in Tutankhamen's tomb that was still edible?

I think honey was used medicinally in Ancient Egypt jeni
honey and Egypt

I think they did find honey.
It is still used medicinally particularly manuka that has extra antibacterial qualities (it is claimed - bees fed on manuka which is a tea tree family)
They use it for leg ulcers. But the way honey would work on infected wounds would be the same as osmosis explanation above.
In my son's oncology dept they recommended manuka honey for mouth ulcers. He had one real nasty one when he was on chemo before he got this tip. After that he had a teaspoonful of manuka a day. Whether or not it was the honey I do not know, but no more ulcers.