I generally look for expiration dates in the dairy and meat cases in the grocery store. I'm also careful with the same when I remove a product from the refrigerator before use.

I'm not as careful buying canned, bottled and boxed goods and even worse when removing an item from the cupboard/pantry before serving or using.

The night before last, Mrs BamaVol couldn't find her preferred salad dressing (Ken's Steakhouse Lite Vidalia Onion) in the fridge. So, she went to the pantry where the overstock is kept. She looked at the date and said it was expired. Then she went through the jumble of bottles on that particular shelf and found most of our stock was past its "use by" date. Oldest items were three and a half years past! Typical bottle/jar of dressing, barbeque sauce or pickles was six to eighteen months past! I don't think it's been six months since I purchased any of these and suspect I've been played a fool by the local Winn Dixie. My first weekend project is to search their shelves, fill a shopping cart, and present them to the store manager. My second is to repeat the process a couple days later, assuming they will be restocked. I wonder what project number 3 should be?