At about this same time last year, I had decided to throw myself a birthday party. It was to be an extravagant event for the ages; a no expense spared type of affair.
Before you ask, no, there was no one in my life at the time willing to put the event together for me, or to even ensure I had a cake upon which would sit the multitude of candles chronicling my life that, without doubt, would take at least two full breaths to extinguish.
So, to ensure the proper celebration for such an event, I decided that I was really the only person qualified, and or available, to bring the type of event together that would leave a lasting impression on the party-goers and the proper amount of adulation for yours truly.
We were having a particularly mild and wonderfully pleasant summer so I decided to have a cook out at my country estate and invited more people than would be candles on my rather generic, but enormously large price club sheet cake.
To make this part of a long story short and to minimize the opening of old wounds, a grand total of five people showed up to my "special" and very expensive day. Oh, they all had their excuses. Something about an approaching hurricane and mandatory evacuation...yeah sure, whatever.
Anyway, as you can imagine, I had a ton of food that, even if we could have kept all the plates and plastic sporks from blowing away, would be impossible for my small band of wet party goers (party tent blew away as well) to eat and would have to be thrown out, much to the dismay of all the hungry children in Africa. My son was sure to point this fact out, parroting my many lectures as to why he should eat all his vegetables.
We saved what we could of the uncooked hot dogs, hamburgers and discounted ribs by wrapping them in cellophane and tinfoil and putting them in the freezer out in the garage. A month later I had a mutiny on my hands and one child suffering from protein poisoning, but we had managed to eat every last scrap of meat and the freezer was now completely empty.
The cupboards were another story. They were still packed with super-sized containers of ketchup, mayonnaise, mustard, pickles and myriad other condiments bought in bulk from the price club for the event the children were now forbidden to ever mention to me again.
And then it happened. Nearly a year had passed since the untimely arrival of hurricane "Party Crasher", and although all the fallen trees had been cleared away and homes rebuilt, I could never get that year of my life back and was still very bitter and not at all looking forward to what was now not just my birthday but the anniversary of one of the worst days of my life.
As we were sitting down to breakfast the other morning, my son brought me a bottle of ketchup and asked if it was still okay to eat or not. Yes, my odd little child puts ketchup on his eggs just like his father and he had grabbed a year old bottle of ketchup I'd bought for the party out of the cupboard.
A tidal wave of memories and emotions swept over me, and as I sat there crying, my son shrugged his shoulders and proceeded to squirt a mountain of old ketchup over his eggs and had nearly cleared his plate before I came back to my senses.
Great, if he gets sick I'll be spending my birthday at the doctor's office, or worse, the emergency room getting his stomach pumped out. I truly must be cursed.
I quickly looked for an "expiration date" but only found a "best if used by date" instead. Interesting. At least there was not a "do not use after date", and as I was looking for a telephone number on the bottle to whoever could answer this type of question at ketchup headquarters, my daughter said, "just Google it Mom". Again with this Google thing.
She rolled her eyes in response to my blank stare and grabbed the bottle from my hand as she went to log onto the computer. Within no more than a minute or two, she told me that my son would be fine. Ketchup is good for at least a year when unopened. The color and flavor may be affected after this time but it is still considered safe to consume.
My son had finished his eggs and the dog was now licking the plate so I assumed for the moment we were well within the ketchup eating safety guidelines. The flavor had not been significantly altered although I could not completely rely on the culinary testimony of anyone who put ketchup on their eggs, or a dog that eats his own poop, so I made my daughter sample a spoonful.
"Yes honey, I'm aware you hate ketchup, but just hold your nose and tell me if you hate this ketchup more than usual."
After changing my vomit covered blouse, I deemed all was well by her usual reaction to foods she dislikes, and although we had a close scare, my impending birthday was not going to be ruined by ghosts from the past. Of course, there were still other consumables left over from last year so my green tinted daughter and I made a list and checked out the expiration dates at the website she had just found online.
I'm not the best homemaker on the block and when you live out in the country like I do, you have the block pretty much to yourself, so I though it might be a good idea to go over their entire list to make sure I had no potential trips to the hospital lurking in the cabinets or refrigerator.
Let's see. Coffee, wine and frozen dinners are of no concern; their expiration dates never even come into question. But how about the marshmallows we bought for last years camping trip that was cancelled because all the camping gear was stolen out of the car we had packed the night before? Marshmallows unopened are good for 40 weeks. How many months is that? Great, now I need a calendar!
Mustard two years, mayonnaise unopened will last indefinitely. Cool, but what about the jar that is open? 2 to 3 months from purchase date. Uh-oh.
Olives, three years, peanuts 18 months unless frozen (who ever thinks to freeze their peanuts), natural peanut butter nine months, processed, two years! And they say natural is better. Frugal mothers choose Jif!
Imitation maple syrup, one year. Real syrup, never mind, ain't ever going to happen. White rice two years, honey forever and ever, bottled salad dressing I bought as part of my new year's resolution to start eating better, one year, nine months if opened, excellent, top's never been off it, I still have a few months!
Well, I don't want to bore you but I did throw a lot of stuff out and made a note to get the kids checked out by the pediatrician as soon as possible. You might want to check your cabinets also because you never know when you may stumble across that chocolate bar you hid from the kids so well you couldn't find it yourself, and when you do, you just know you are going to take a bite out of it, but if it's more than a year old, those may be more than guilt pains your feeling down deep in your belly and your kids might not be around to ask Google what to do about it.
For more from the mind of Myla, please go to
http://www.mylamadson.com 
