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I just updated my May list of my food store.
When Corona hit, I made a revision of the inventory list, and deciced to make a monthly check:
First, for each kind of product to ensure that I am not below the minimum threshold.
Second: In my very simplistic spreadsheet (no sor of calculation, its only function is to manage a table of rows and columns), I have not only entered the amount in store, but also the "Best Before" date, to remind myself of what I've got down in the basement that I shold make use of before it gets too old.
One element that I have found handy: In the lefmost column, identifying the product, I have also indicated a "typical" best-before interval, both as a reminder of which goods should not tbe stored for too long, and in those cases where I stock stuff where I cannot find any BB.
I do not have everything listed in my inventory. "Baking powder" was actually missing. That has do do with me not using it too often, but that might change (and I know how!). I guess that the stuff has a quite long shelf life, so I might very well buy a new box long before the old one is empty.
So, thanks for the reminder.
Btw: I do get surprises now and then: A few years back, I discovered that my salt was way past its Best Before date. Huh?? NaCl is NaCli - isn't it? If it deteriorates with age, what does it deteriorate to?? Anyway, the bag was almost empty, so soon after, I had to buy a new bag anyway. Now that bag is past its BB by more than a year! They say we are using too much salt in our food. I just can't believe that applies to me ...
Probably the BB refers to the "danger" of the salt clumping. So for long-time "emergency" storage, I am considering buying another bag, making sure that it is reasonaby dry (by leaving it for at least 24 h in at most 30% relative humidity at 25 degees C), and then vacuum seal it before it goes down to the basement. I do not need much salt to alter the taste of my food, but I can easily imagine situations where I might want to use salt to preserve food, in particular in case of a power outage in mid summer.
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Member 7989122 wrote: A few years back, I discovered that my salt was way past its Best Before date. Huh?? NaCl is NaCli - isn't it? If it deteriorates with age, what does it deteriorate to??
Sounds like manufacturer defensive posturing. I believe there are dozens of fungi that can colonize salt including Aspergillus.
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It was a mutation of a tubor-born variant, Potato Chipsis.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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I suspect the reason is the same as here.
Everything meant for human consumption has to have a best before date by law. And the law makes no room for exceptions, because that list of exceptions would be to long, indistinct and full of ambiguities.
The manufacturers happily oblige, because there will always be that idiot throwing away a bag of sugar out of date, and then they can sell more.
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The last year we have had a number of products being labeled "Best Before so-and-so, but may be perfectly fine long thereafter", or something like that. We are getting back to the moral from my childhood: You never throw away food! ... There has been several TV programs and news reports about it the last year or two, people who manage to live exclusively on "throwaway food" without any problems (one store chain has for at least a year had as a rule that any food expiring the same day, or is past Best Before, is yours for free), etc.
Today it is very negative for the image of a food producer if it is revealed that he throws away food that could be eaten. The food stores cannot legally sell stuff past the last day of consumption (I am not sure if it is as strict for Best Before). Almost all stores have a "discount shelf" for food that has only a few days left. So instead of throwing it away, I can buy it at half price. I see lots of people searching those shelves. The stores are getting better at estimating the sales volume, so ever more often the discount shelves are almost empty.
So consumers are learning not to waste food. In our canteen at work, we frequently can find e.g. stews where one ingredient is the meat or fish that was not sold out the day before; they take pride in not throwing away any food. Now the food industry itself is being attacked, and they are improving (but have a long way to go!). One TV program about the poulty industry revealed that hens produce eggs for a year, then they are killed and used as filling in concrete (it sounds crazy to me!) - customers want chicken, not hens. But after this program was broadcast, buyers started asking for hens, and it became available in the stores. The third major actor is the public institutions, like hospitals and schools and old age homes: They consider health security so important that they rather throw away than run any sort of risk.
So we are getting better. Slowly.
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Member 7989122 wrote: One TV program about the poulty industry revealed that hens produce eggs for a year, then they are killed and used as filling in concrete (it sounds crazy to me!)
Yes, that's pure bullshit! Sounds like vegan propaganda to me.
No one would put organic materials in concrete, it would be really bad for the quality.
And no one would raise and feed a chicken for a whole year, to just use it for one more year. That's stupid.
Hens are considered productive for about five to seven years. After that they're going to slaughter like any other chicken. They're just not used for the same purpose as chickens are. They become dog food, chicken stock and ground chicken meat patties and such things.
In contrary to popular propaganda, the food industry isn't wasteful. It's money we are talking about.
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I checked up the details from that TV program. It is not pure bullshit, but it requires some explanation: The dead hens are processed through a "fat separator" (or whatever the English term is): The fats are isolated and rinsed, and becomes raw materieral for biodiesel production. About 40% of the original weight is water, and is damped off. The remaining mass has a high fraction of materials from feathers and bones, but it can be used for burning, to produce heat - and it so happens that those who do that are the producer of concrete. This may be just a conicidence, but so it is. The ashes from the burning are in fact mixed into the concrete, not because it improves the quality of the concrete, but it does not have a significant negative effect either. So by mixing in the ashes, the question of what to do with the ashes goes away.
So it is true that at least some of the hens go into the concrete, although after all the fats have gone to biodiesel production and the remaining organic compounds are more or less completely oxidized into gases - or as we say: burnt. Essentially, the non-organic compounds are what ends up in the concrete.
The hens running around in your garden certainly can give you eggs for a number of years. But in this super-cost-sensitive industry, they must keep the production at maximum all the time: From age about half a year to a year and a half, each hen lays one egg a day - approximately 360 eggs. The hens running freely around on the farm of your grandpa in the 1900s, he most likely had a yield less than half of that. After the hen is around 78 weeks (1.5 years) old, the yield starts dininishing. Quite soon, it is more economical to replace the "old" hen with a young one that manages to produce an egg a day. The cost of maintaining 7500 hens (the size of the first farm visisted by the TV team) is a function of the number of hens, regardless of egg production. Getting one egg every second day instead of every day reduces the cost only marginally. But the farm's income is a direct function of then number of eggs laid. So they keep the hens in production for a year, before they are killed. Or slaughtered.
The TV team followed the dead hens (killed by gassing) all the way to the recirculation plant, specializing in processing of all sorts of organic waste, not just hens but also e.g. residues from the slaughter houses, turning it all into oil products and a mass that can be burned for heating, into ashes. So they are used, but not as meat. Not for eating.
The biggest chicken slaughter house in Norway explained that chicken have much more developed, and stronger, legs than egg-laying hens. After slaughting, they are hung by their legs on this transport rail that takes them through a lot of robotized processing steps, from feathering to removing entrails and flushing all the blood off. This handling strains the legs so much that a hen's legs would break; they would have to make significant adjustments to the processing line to handle hens. So this egg farm who wanted to market hen's meat rather than burning them, had to go across the border to Sweden to find a poulty slaughter house that could take in 7500 hens; there were none in Norway. In Sweden, there is an established market for ground meat, meat balls etc. from egg laying hens; I hope that we could have a similar development in Norway.
I have been thinking that maybe, when I retire, would like to have a few hens in my garden: The chicken you buy is just a substrate for "Mixed Spice for Chicken" - it has very litte tast of its own. Nothing like a well matured hen! The chicken grows to full size in 28 days; that is not enough time to develop any taste! (So I prefer turkey to chicken; turkey has at least some taste!) But I would do it as much for the meat as for the eggs! If the hen lays one egg a day for five years before I slaughter it, that is 1800 eggs for each slaughtered hen! So if I decide to go for that, I most likely would take out the hens after at most two years. And my friends and neighbours would probably spend far less on their egg budget than they used to... (I think the eggs of today also has a very watered out taste compared to eggs in my childhood. I guess each hen produces as much egg taste as before, but today it is spread over 2-3 times as many eggs! I guess that I would go for races that lays fewer, but more tasteful eggs, of such races are available.)
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Glad you clarified, I thought I was in the wrong movie.
Yes, Calciumoxide from bones is certainly used in concrete, in the old times the bones were burned and ground and fed to animals again, but since the mad cow disease that practice had to stop. No more bonfires.
My grandfathers hens (yes he had hens  ) certainly laid less than 180 eggs every year, they only laid eggs in the light part of the year. No eggs in the winter. That's why we celebrate Easter with eggs.
That's also the reason why the egg factories of today are having the light on all the time. No sleep for egg producing hens.
It's correct that the cost of the hens is basically constant no matter how many eggs they lay, they all eat approximately the same from one month of age, and lay their first egg at about six months of age.
So that's five months of unproductive eating the first year. So the egg laying frequency must basically drop to half after the first productive year for it to make sense to exchange them that early.
I'm having some doubts.
Member 7989122 wrote: The biggest chicken slaughter house in Norway explained that chicken have much more developed, and stronger, legs than egg-laying hens. After slaughting, they are hung by their legs on this transport rail that takes them through a lot of robotized processing steps, from feathering to removing entrails and flushing all the blood off. This handling strains the legs so much that a hen's legs would break; they would have to make significant adjustments to the processing line to handle hens. So this egg farm who wanted to market hen's meat rather than burning them, had to go across the border to Sweden to find a poulty slaughter house that could take in 7500 hens; there were none in Norway.
I'm surprised, I thought the problem with weak legs was in the old times when the hens were caged and couldn't move, but todays hens are free roaming with stronger legs.
How old was this program?
Member 7989122 wrote: I have been thinking that maybe, when I retire, would like to have a few hens in my garden
Then you will learn that all the eggs you don't find will get smelly after a while. 
Member 7989122 wrote: Nothing like a well matured hen!
Indeed. In Germany you can buy so called "Suppenhuhn", they're tougher but also tastier than chicken.
Member 7989122 wrote: I think the eggs of today also has a very watered out taste compared to eggs in my childhood. I guess each hen produces as much egg taste as before, but today it is spread over 2-3 times as many eggs! I guess that I would go for races that lays fewer, but more tasteful eggs, of such races are available.
It's more depending on the food than the "concentration". Free roaming hens in the garden eat anything from grass and insects to worms, while factory chicken mostly eat grains to grow fast.
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Jörgen Andersson wrote: So that's five months of unproductive eating the first year. So the egg laying frequency must basically drop to half after the first productive year for it to make sense to exchange them that early. I'm having some doubts.
That's what they told in this TV series. It might be of some importance that in this one hen house, all the hens were of the same age; they renewed all 7500 hens once a year, killing them all (with CO2) in a single operation. I guess that saves a lot of management, where they do not have to keep track of the age of each individal hen. If they had chosen to keep them longer (but still same age), their delivery volume would not be stable, but gradually decline, and the buyers wouldn't get the expected volume of eggs. Then, suddenly, when you renew the flock, you have more eggs than the customers are prepared to buy. By keeping a steady production volume, customers have a steady supply, and you can be sure to sell what you produce.
You could, of course, set up three separate hen houses of 2500 each, and divide the outdoors area into three separate ones, with fences, and make sure that no hen can ever sneak over to another age group. Then you could have stocks of, say, 7-18, 19-30 and 31-42 months of age. But three henhouses are more expensive than one henhouse (even if they are each much smaller). Taking care of three flocks requires more work that taking care of one. And your total production would go down.
I guess analysts may have differing opinions of the economics of letting the hens live longer, and of age stratification. If you know each hen by name and hacking date, it is probably different from having 7500 hens. And having 50,000 hens in six henhouses, with a dozen people employed, makes age stratification far easier than if you have a family farm where you do all the work yourself. So "Your Medaian-hen-age May Vary", as they say in other businesses...
I've got a lot of old books. This 80 page booklet "Poultry farming at home" from 1905 states that "With rational treatment, a hen will probably not be worth keeping for more than three years, many hens no more than two. We can estimate the life time of a hen to around 30 months." So even back then, they did not recommend keeping the hens very much past their high season!
I'm surprised, I thought the problem with weak legs was in the old times when the hens were caged and couldn't move, but todays hens are free roaming with stronger legs. How old was this program?
They experienced some problems and delays: The Swedish slaughter house didn't satisfy all the requirements of the food chain that was going to sell products, and they didn't find a new one until the first flock of hens had to be killed off in the "traditional" way, to make room for the next generation. It ended up with the Norwegian slaughter house adapting one production line for the next batch, in the fall of 2016. So the filming that started in the fall of 2015 was not completed until the fall of 2016, and the series was put on the air in January 2017.
These hens were most certainly free-roaming! You can see the program host chasing hens in the birch forest and under bushes.
The people at the slaughterhouse told that hens that have been into high intensity egg production often suffer form osteoporosis. My guess is that there are limits to how much calcium a hen can absorb from the food (whether found in the green grass or it comes as fodder). Laying one egg a day drains the hen for so much calcium that its skeleton suffers. In the old days, with half as many eggs or less, the calcium drain was significantly less; this may have been just as significant as giving the hens physical exercize!
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I cheked the NRK archives: The program about the hens is available, with no geographical restrictions, at NRK TV – FBI redder høna[^]. It is all Norwegian (but a Swede will probably understand it).
This is the first in a four-part series; the next parts also adress the demant for "perfect" vegetables, and the burning of goat kids that noone wants.
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Member 7989122 wrote: but a Swede will probably understand it
I can converse with people from Oslo without any greater problems.
But when I was in Alesund I didn't have a clue what anyone said. And if I spoke English with them they took offence. 
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Baking Soda is Sodium Bicarbonate. At normal temperatures (i.e., you don't live furnace) it is stable indefinitely. Especially if kept dry and in a sealed container.
However,
Once it is exposed to the air it can (potentially) react with strange and wonderful components in the air. It is, for this reason, used as a refrigerator deodorizer. Even in that case, it would be rare to use more than a tiny bit of it's capacity to do what it's used in baking for: to react with food acids and form CO2
This is not to be confused with "baking powder" - which is a mixture of sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), tartaric acid, and other miscellany that a manufacturer may throw in. Upon contact with moisture the tartaric acid reacts with the sodium bicarbonate to release CO2 and thus cause the (baked good?) to rise. Or cork to pop. Or, remembering a toy found in a shredded wheat box when I was about 8 years old, cause the divers and submarines to rise and fall in a glass of water.
So - it really never goes bad if kept sealed up. Same with salt - which may have Potassium Iodide (slightly unstable in oxidizing atmosphere) and other additives to keep it "easy pour". So-called Kosher Salt, aside from its coarseness (useful when used for osmosis) is just plain NaCl.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Unfortunately, most young grocery store workers have never used baking powder or baking soda for their original purpose — leavening baked goods. I am almost willing to bet that only a few have ever baked bread, cookies or cake from scratch – they always use a prepared mix, if they ever bake at all!
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Lord, grant me the serenity to accept that there are some things I just can’t keep up with, the determination to keep up with the things I must keep up with, and the wisdom to find a good RSS feed from someone who keeps up with what I’d like to, but just don’t have the damn bandwidth to handle right now.
© 2009, Rex Hammock
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That is why I will NOT use those services. My wife has used them once or twice but she only ordered some basic stuff.
I would only order stuff that comes in a box. I don't want someone else choosing my produce or meat.
The thought of someone else choosing my food bothers me to my core, my hunter/gatherer caveman core.
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Bread lines. Look it up.
I don't feel too bad for you.
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Don't have too! Been there, done that; 40 years ago.
Never judge someone by thier current circumstances - life changes over time.
INTP
"Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra
"I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone
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Today I melted an ice cube with my mind by just staring at it.
It took a lot longer than I thought it would!
When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know.
But if you listen, you may learn something new.
--Dalai Lama
JaxCoder.com
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Did you know that if you wrap wheat in an old shirt and leave it on the barn floor overnight, it will spontaneously generate rats?
I read that somewhere. 
INTP
"Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra
"I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone
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I bet You'd attract more critters if you left bacon out!
When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know.
But if you listen, you may learn something new.
--Dalai Lama
JaxCoder.com
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I wonder who would win that fight. The rats, cats, dogs, or the army of bugs that would descend on that offering.
INTP
"Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence." - Edsger Dijkstra
"I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. " - Daniel Boone
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You can do the same with clouds. Single one out and you'll swear it works.
It was only in wine that he laid down no limit for himself, but he did not allow himself to be confused by it.
― Confucian Analects: Rules of Confucius about his food
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I'd be worried if you did that and subsequently got a brain freeze.
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Probably just for people in the US, where do you go to find a used car? I need to buy my daughter a pickup truck and am looking to spend under $5,000. I checked Craigslist, cars.com, and kbb and cannot find many options.
Just curious if anyone has other sources for finding used cars. Private sell only.
Thanks.
Social Media - A platform that makes it easier for the crazies to find each other.
Everyone is born right handed. Only the strongest overcome it.
Fight for left-handed rights and hand equality.
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ZurdoDev wrote: ...where do you go to find a used car?
Used car lot.
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles
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Private sale only. No way am I dealing with a dealer. 
Social Media - A platform that makes it easier for the crazies to find each other.
Everyone is born right handed. Only the strongest overcome it.
Fight for left-handed rights and hand equality.
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