Enjoy By
/I have a LOT of condiments, sauces and compotes that I use for specific recipes, and not that often. Tonight I'm making a tofu curry from Sunset Magazine inspired by a dish at Hawker Fare, one of Oakland's best new restaurants. It calls for fish sauce. When I went to check to see if I even had any, the expiration date on the bottle was worn off from condensation and being banged around. I had no idea when I bought it, so I had to toss and replace. While in there I discovered a few more items with unreadable dates, and some that I guess I felt never went bad that had expired a WHILE ago. Gross. I came up with a solution to this problem. Using circular labels, the kind you might use tagging items at a garage sale, I went through and marked the expiration date in sharpie and stickered the top of the jar lid (or back of bottle). It only took a few minutes to get it all done, and it'll take no time to keep the system going. FYI, Real Simple has a loose guide to determine expiration dates of food and other household products.