Milk – Cow Juice & The Film
Straight off the bat, congratulations to Sean Penn for winning the Oscar for Best Actor the other night. I say winning, but of course we can’t say that any more; we must say the Oscar “went to” him – presumably for fear of implying that the others are all losers.
Well, they are. Or at least they were that night. I’m sure some of them will be again, and some will win something one day, but let’s call a spade a spade.
Apropos that victory (natch) for Milk, and something that happens on a regular basis in my house, I thought I’d bring up the subject of Use By, Best Before and Sell By dates.
Before we go any further, I love my Girlfriend, who is also the Mother of my wonderful Daughter and has another one brewing, as it were. However, there is one aspect of her behaviour which I find brilliantly off the wall and endearing at the same time, and it’s her relationship with the dates printed on the side of everything these days.
For the most part, if a perishable good is even in the same lunar cycle as its Use By date, she will become agitated, and make moves to hide it from me, so that it can then be discarded without my noticing.
However, as we order our shopping online, and I do all the cooking in our house, I know exactly what we’ve got at all times, so her efforts are largely in vain.
Notwithstanding the waste of money, my beef isn’t so much with this particular habit as with the behaviour that she displays alongside it. For example, whilst pouring 2 pints of perfectly drinkable milk down the sink (as she did this morning), she can be happily cutting the mould off the cheddar before making her daily sandwiches.
Whilst chucking out a chicken that’s been deep frozen for 2 months, she can be happily reheating a pie portion from the fridge I made 6 days before.
I don’t try and work out what’s going on in her head – I’ve long since given up on that – but I do wonder about it.