Expiration Dates? As If!!!

Truth be known, I grew up in a household where expiration dates on food were an irrelevant and useless reference point. Yogurt more than three months expired? Oh please... yogurt is already cultured... what does it matter? It's fine! Eat it! Butter left out all day on the kitchen counter? It will build your immune system! Cottage cheese that expired last week? Oh no... that's the "sell by" date... it's not expired. Just ignore the flavor if it's a bit sour...

My mother is the ultimate "perishable item" naysayer. If it's still in the fridge, or elsewhere in her kitchen, despite the manufacturer's recommended warnings, it's still fair game. To recount just a few short stories...

1. "The Meatloaf" -- My mother has always been in the habit of hanging onto left-overs. As the result of her upbringing by a "depression era baby" (AKA my grandmother, god rest her soul), my mom just can't throw anything away. The end result of this is at least 20 Tupperware containers, containing approximately one spoonful of old casserole each, lining every refrigerator shelf possible. When these leftover items built up to unusable quantities, my mother devised the ultimate disposal remedy (that of course did not involve throwing anything in the garbage)... this remedy was called "meatloaf"...

Take one pound of meat, some left-over corn, a touch of 'cream of onion soup' vegetable casserole, a sprinkling of broccoli spears chopped into bite-size portions, and some stale and likely moldy & dry bread, torn into small bits. Mix together with ketchup. Put in oven. Take out and serve for dinner to smiling and unsuspecting family members...


"I would do anything for love..." -- Oh wait, this is the wrong Meatloaf...

In fact, I recently spoke with one of my closest friends from junior high school, and she recounted in great detail the memory of being invited to my house for dinner on a night when my mother served her notorious meatloaf. So traumatized was poor Vicky that she still remembered the corn kernels and other "mystery items" in the very strange meatloaf given to her that evening...

2. Cheese -- My mom loves moldy cheese...


Ahhh, marbled cheddar... so reminiscent of my youth...

Not Stilton or Blue Cheese, but moldy cheddar (which all of us "normal" people realize should not be colored green). As a kid, my mom would try to camouflage moldy cheese on sandwiches, often cutting away the green and furry parts to leave the "good orange cheese" below. It never fooled me though, as I could taste old cheese a mile away. It greatly irritated me throughout my childhood lunchtimes, as I peeled the bread back to find a hardened chunk of two-month old cheddar lying dormant on a layer of Miracle Whip (while my school friends shrieked in laughter and recoiled in horror). My mom would defend herself with, "well, the French eat moldy cheese all the time," or "it won't hurt you... penicillin is actually made from mold." My mom still eats moldy cheese.

3. Crackers and Soup --- My mom has a penchant for holding onto old boxed goods well past their due dates. Take crackers, for instance --- my mom tried to serve crackers once to a small group of friends (and me) that had to have been sitting at least two years in her cupboard. We immediately spit them out, saying "Oooooo! These taste funny!" And my mother, ever the good sport and faithful 'holder-onto of food' just laughed it off and delved around for a fresher box of something (maybe one year old). She once did the same thing for soup, serving Lipton boxed soup to our neighbor, only to have him holler out in surprise, "Ahhhh! There's something in my soup!" Turns out that the soup had been sitting so long in the cabinet that mealworms had hatched, and they were floating around in the broth... like this...



Again, my mom laughed it off ("oh, it's just protein for you!"), although she did grab the bowl away from him.

4. The Cream Cheese Incident --- Once, in the summer between college years, my mom was out of town, and I invited some of my friends over to illicitly drink beer and go swimming at the golf course lake near our house. As we were pilfering through her fridge looking for snacks later in the evening, one of the guys decided to toast a bagel and slather it with cream cheese. Pulling out the tub of cream cheese, I heard him let out of a cry of terror --- the stuff was so old that green fuzz was nearly climbing out the sides of the plastic container.


Mmmm, cream cheese delight!

"Ohhh, sorry," I responded bashfully, "my mom loses track of her refrigerator items sometimes."

To be honest, I sometimes can't believe I made it through childhood without coming down with something, although I do credit a hearty immune system to my mom's food handling...

OK, so why the long weird story of my mom's perishable food history? I'm simply setting the scene for the real story that occurred this past weekend. You see, sadly, poor Miguel fell victim to this characteristic of my mother on Saturday...

As we were driving home from Baltimore late Saturday night, Miguel was yawning and fading behind the wheel of my mom's car. He was very thirsty and asked if there were any bottles of water that we'd brought with us in the car. Hunting around, my mom and I realized that we'd already drunk the two bottles we brought. However, about five minutes later, my mom pulled a bottle of water out from (this was not a good sign) underneath the driver's seat.

"Here, Miguel!!" she chirped. "I found some water!"


Sitting in the back of her Honda, this photo shows my mom preparing to pass the water to the front of the vehicle for consumption...

I should have known better than to hand the bottle blindly over to poor Miguel. Not knowing how long it might have been in the car, I simply wiped off the mouth of the bottle and passed it to him. I could tell he was hesitant about where the bottle might have been, but not totally familiar with the aforementioned information regarding my mom's food handling/expiration date history, Miguel (without putting his lips to the mouth of the bottle), innocently poured the water into his mouth, unaware of any serious repercussions.

Immediately, I saw his expression change into one of a person who has just drunk anti-freeze, or human urine, or pig's blood. Fearful, I snatched the bottle from his hand and put my nose to the opening. What greeted my olfactory system was something akin to a mildewed bath towel mixed with pond algae and poop. This is when I burst out laughing, knowing that only my mother would pass someone a water that was full of amoebic dyssentery bacteria from sitting in her car for so long.


There's nothing like a fresh glass of old bottled water...

Needless to say, Miguel was unamused and (according to him) threw up in his own mouth three times before we made it home. Luckily, he was better by morning, although he remained annoyed at me for finding his situation so amusing.

And honestly, I hate to say it, but I'm still laughing...