Daring To Defy The Sell-By-Date.

 Discovering long forgotten goods.

In the fridge of course. The vegetable tray to be exact and a punnet of soup vegetables. You know, this thrown together quartet of yellow carrot, orange carrot, flat celery and a twig of parsley. Seen in every vegetable aisle during winter and loved by Bob.

He enjoys making soup and usually when he comes along to shop the first thing he gets is  one of those punnets. Fair enough and jolly good as that means I have one less meal to make. But then again, best laid plans and so forth. Often he forgets and sadly the vegetables go off.

Well today I made a hearty soup and looked for extras to put into it while at the same time taking care of left overs. Bob's long forgotten punnet came to the fore and even I was surprised that most of its residents were still fine to use. Can you believe that the sell-by-date was the end of January? Yikes.

A few edges had to be discarded but on the whole there was nothing wrong with the vegetables. Made me think about the amount of times I have thrown away perfectly good food because someone had determined a date for their demise. An advertising ploy?

Makes one wonder who determines these official dates. One extra day, one extra week would save a lot of vegetables from being thrown away needlessly. Often we are like perfect little soldiers and follow orders instead of relying on our sense of what is still good enough to cook with and what's not.

So far so good with regards to our soup, and honestly, it should have made itself known by now. On to supper and maybe some further past their sell-by-date ingredients.

Biggi