h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

PH: Musicians' classifieds which don't bother to give actually useful details like musical influences and the sort of band they want to join.

"I'm a 32-year-old bassist and I wanna be in a band! lol."

Best-before-date thingies:

Look at it - does it look OK?

Sniff it - does it smell OK?

Taste a little of it - does it taste OK?

If not, spit it out and throw it away, otherwise, it's OK.

That said, our office policy (+100 people) is that each Friday at 3 pm, stuff that aren't marked with the name of the owner gets thrown away, regardless of date.

I'm guessing that a jar of peanut butter that hasn't been used in 18 months isn't going to be eaten any time soon.

Yoghurts - a few days over sell by is probably fine. The ones I threw out of the office fridge at Christmas had best before dates of September and July. My biggest crime (apparently) was to throw out half empty water bottles that had taken up one whole shelf in the fridge for over 6 months.

I tend to ask myself - what would I do if this was my own fridge? Would I feed this to my children?

Anyhoo, onto my next petty hate - last year's calendar is still hanging on the wall.

If there is one thing I can't stomach is a yoghurt past its sell by date

Current PH due to my phone deciding to curl up and die: Phoning customer services for help only to find you know more about the problem than them

Yoghurt really keeps for a looooong time past its official date.

And you can always use it to start a new pot.

I concur on the yoghurt thing. They last weeks, even months past their USE (not sell or best) before date. At the end of the day, yoghurt is just corrupted milk anyway

Listen folks, if you learn only one thing today, let it be;
Ignore sell by and best before dates. OK? They are for retailers and stock control only. Thanks

A recent report revealed the disgusting amount of (usually unopened) yoghurt thrown away annually in the UK alone (16 million tonnes, through figures vary naturally). Nothing makes me more angry than food waste. Just f**ng smell and taste the stuff; don't blithely add to our vast food waste mountain like it's all from an unlimited supply that'll go on forever It's mostly all physcological anyway; i don't think I've *ever* tasted off yohgurt. It might seem a bit dodgy because the date tells you it should be... but really ?

and breath ...

If the yoghurt is off, serve it as cheese.

and if the cheese is off, give it to the cat.

Ah, but cheese never goes off, does it? It just matures.

damn, I was hoping someone would have a suggestion for what to do after the cat goes off ...

Lure it back with some ancient cheese.

>>I was hoping someone would have a suggestion for what to do after the cat goes off ...


Cats don't go off, they go miaow.

Well, this cat definitely goes 'woof' when he think no-one sees him:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aP3gzee1cps

I like the first comment.

ah yes, office fridges. I regularly chuck stuff out, no warning. Mind you the other day I was tutting over a sandwich that had been there since before christmas and as I was driving home I realised it was mine...

Our fridge often has Kimchi in it. The smell pervades even closed yoghurt pots and it's totally disgusting. (I love Kimchi but not in my yoghurt) I need to think of some really good passive-agressive notes for that.

I can't believe so many sane people give a toss about the office fridge. Then again, I never use ours. No skin off my nose if it's a botulism factory.

PH: Just-throw-it-in-the-oven food with ridiculously fussy cooking instructions. "Pierce five times, put in oven at Gas Mark 4 for 35 minutes, gently agitate every ten minutes..."

Let's face it, it's hardly fine delicacies we're talking about. Gas mark 6 for twenty minutes will do the job grand. It's not like there's much to ruin.

I bring my lunch in to work every day. I put it in the office fridge. I want to be pretty confident that my own lunch is safe in that environment.

I might eat a yoghurt a week past its sell by. The problem with 3 month old tubs in teh office fridge is that nobody remembers who it was, so it's NEVER going to get eaten.

Collaborative guide entry?

I'm all for keeping something past the date printed on the packaging, but yoghurt past its sell by date tastes disgusting You lot are weird

Well duh!