I hate waste but....

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

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?

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

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

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

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!"

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').

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.

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

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.

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'.

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!

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

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?

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.

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'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.

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

Devon Numpty!

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.

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.

Our children like to think we need looking after.

How do they think we reached this ripe old age, and raised them successfully too, without having the instructions printed on each potato in the sack?

Yes I have been subjected to the food date storm trooper approach from offspring. I think they enjoy throwing their weight about and taking the moral high ground occasionally don't they. Bless them. But when you see them in action, throwing away perfectly good brown sauce etc you can believe those waste estimates.
Whereas if you read the label the contents are mainly preservative - vinegar, sugar and spices - all antibacterial. I'm sure something like that would last about a decade without turning toxic.
It is bound to be wasteful and expensive to use tiny pots of things. Loads more plastic for one thing.
Of course you only get dates on veg if you buy them in plastic bags. As if you cannot tell when a vegetable starts to go "off"
stansgran are you sure about the milk? The milk I get does not go off in a nice way. I think pasteurised milk does not go sour in the nice, yoghurt, lactic acidy way that raw milk would.
Now raw milk - that's a dangerous "natural" thing.

Janthea If my dd or ds started going through my cupboards and chucking stuff out, I'd be showing them the door!
Cheek!

Why is sushi considered safe to eat? I've never wanted to try it myself, but now I think about it, why is it OK to eat certain fish raw?

Generally I use my nose and eyes and take a small taste. I also cook things throughly. I might perhaps be a bit cautious about some slices of ham a day or two past their use by date and not serve them cold with salad but I will use it well cooked in a carbonara, for example, providing the ham still looks and smells OK.

I am offering hostages to fortune but no-one has yet got food poisoning from my cooking. DH had food poisoning recently after we went out for a meal and he chose the tuna that came 'seared', the current weasel word for parcooked.

I think a lot of food poisoning can be blamed on the current fashion for serving almost every meat, and now some fish, only parcooked. If meat, and in fact almost any food is thoroughly cooked before being consumed food poisoning cases would fall dramtically.