Labels in the kitchen—how old is this mustard anyway?

For my first try at a household hint (hello, Heloise!), I’m going to discuss labeling food with the date it was opened. There are two categories of foods that particularly benefit from labeling—leftovers and condiments.

Leftovers are the most obvious candidates for a date-label. You don’t want them to sit around so long that they become unsafe. But how long has that leftover casserole actually been in there?

When I put a plastic container of leftover soup in the fridge, I can’t imagine forgetting that I made soup on Monday. But perhaps Tuesday I go out for dinner, and maybe Wednesday I don’t remember the soup till I’ve already started something else, and Thursday I don’t even think about it. On Friday I pull it out and cudgel my brain. Was it Monday or Tuesday that I made soup? I wasn’t here Tuesday—wait, was it over the weekend? No, surely not. It couldn’t have been last week—or could it?

The situation is even worse in the freezer. I’ve pulled things out only to realize they’d been in there two years (and I know this only because they were labeled.) Not only does it help to put a date on leftovers before freezing them, it also helps to write down what they are. After a few months, vegetarian soup and chicken cacciatore start to look a lot alike. Even pizza sauce and strawberry puree have a vague similarity when frozen.

Condiments usually have a long life compared to leftovers, but in a way, that’s part of the problem. Condiments that don’t get much use—say, plum sauce--can sit in the fridge for quite a long time without getting used up. After a while, it’s hard to remember if that plum sauce has been there for six months, or eighteen. Or thirty-two. Even if it hasn’t gone bad, it isn’t going to be good.

An example: Many years ago, when visiting my parents, we needed dijon mustard for some recipe.

“Oh, I don’t think that mustard can still be good,” my mother said. “It’s been there for ages.”

“It looks okay.”

“Really, I think it’s been years.”

But it was mustard, after all, and it didn’t smell bad. So we used it (and nothing bad happened.) But since my mother had insisted it was old, we bought a new jar of dijon to replace it. We brought it home, opened it, and compared the jars.

It was shocking! The new dijon was brighter in color, with a sharper, more dijon-y smell and taste. The old jar was clearly long past its prime.

In focusing on leftovers and condiments, I don’t mean to suggest that dates can’t be helpful on other food products. When I was single, I didn’t eat much peanut butter, and the longer I’d had the jar, the less I liked the peanut butter and the less I ate of it. Then some reason would come up to buy a new jar, and I’d suddenly discover that peanut butter was actually delicious! I had similar problems with corn meal (a fresh bag made really good corn muffins) and olive oil.

So if you find yourself pulling containers out of the fridge and wondering just how long that lasagna has been in there, and whether the cooked rice is from Monday’s stir-fry or the chicken and dumplings the week before, try labeling your food.

As far as how to label food, I like blue painter’s tape and Sharpie. It’s easy to spot, easy to write on, and comes off plastic containers with no trouble. It also works well on many other food containers, but sometimes it’s just as easy to use Sharpie directly on the label or jar top.

Till next post.