I really need to read labels more often

Today I was making dinner – salad and leftover chicken.

I had a bag of salad mix, the one with iceberg lettuce, carrots, purple cabbage, chopped up some tomatoes to add to it… and then went searching for salad dressing… there was some in the fridge but mom likes the Asian Sesame one.  I had a “new” bottle in the pantry so I grabbed it and happened to look at the Best Before date.

Um.   Best Before 29 Mar 2011.  Oh.

Showed Mom… she thought it might be okay, I mean, it was still factory sealed, right?  So I opened it… it wasn’t rotten, but didn’t smell terribly fresh.  So, down the drain.

Plan B.  I pulled the Peppercorn Ranch out of the fridge door… and, yes  I did check the date…  3 Nov 2010.  Right… okay, trash that one too.

On to Plan C.  Then I pulled out the bottle of Catalina…. Now this is where it gets REALLY embarrassing….

Kraft changed their bottle design some time back… um… yeah… let’s check the Best Before date shall we…

Now, we could be kind and say that means the 3rd of December of 2016… but we all know that isn’t the case.  The Best Before date is December 16 of TWO THOUSAND AND THREE!  That partially used bottle of Catalina has travelled with us through two moves, possibly three… O.M.G.  It was expired before we moved into Grande Prairie in 2004.

How and the heck did that happen?  I mean, I DID clean out the fridge every time we moved… and I know I’ve cleaned out the expired stuff a couple of times over the past couple of years…

This is really, well, embarrassing… and the real kicker is… Neither of us even LIKE Catalina!

Needless to say I did NOT open that bottle!

The only bottle that was left was Creamy Caesar… and, thankfully, the Best Before date was 12 May 26!  And it was good.

I have to stop buying multiple bottles on sale as we obviously don’t use them up fast enough.