30-JUN-2007

That was the expiration date on our salad dressing.

I discovered this just as I was about to pour my buttermilk ranch over the salad I had slaved over for at least twenty minutes, boiling eggs, filling our bowls with spinach, chopping up green peppers, avocados, tomatoes, carrots, mushrooms and my hard-boiled eggs.  James even grilled chicken; I chopped it.  

Wow, this healthy dish sure looks tasty.

I barely finished sprinkling the salads with bacon bits and croutons when James pointed to a small pile of yellowish goo on his salad, "Uh oh. This doesn't look right."  I tried to convince him that this was peppercorn ranch, it's supposed to be clumpy and discolored.  Though it looked, smelled and tasted just fine, my buttermilk ranch was expired, too.  They both bore the same expiration date: 30-JUN-2007.  

Awesome.

While we were hiking around on the Big Island of Hawaii, our ranch dressing was slowly beginning to rot away in the fridge.

Wow. I'm observant.

I didn't use it even though I was slightly tempted.  As James pointed out, I just dipped my chicken in it on Monday.  It tasted fine then.  How much could it have really changed in the last four days?  

I immediately washed the bottles, placed them in the recycle bin and headed to my nearest grocery store.  The drive gave me plenty of time to contemplate how, for the last eleven months, I've enjoyed expired buttermilk ranch dressing on everything from salads, to veggies, to chicken.  Great.

The new bottle expires in January.  I've marked it on the calendar.