Salvage places are nortorious for past use-by dates. It's good of you to remind us to look before making a purchase. I avoid canned goods from salvage places because you are never sure how the food has been warehoused. If commercial canned goods are stored in hot temperatures, they will have textural changes in the food, as well as what little nutrition is left in them after high-heat canning, will also quickly degrade - so you are essentially eating dead food - empty calories. BUT WAIT, it's CHEAP!!! Last I knew, only foods high in nutrition will feed a body, not empty calories of dead food! That's why I avoid already-prepared foods for storage, and focus on whole-food ingredients with which to MAKE food. Example: all those free apples I dehydrated in slices last fall are now being made into applesauce, cobblers, added to granola and cooked cereal, as well as an out-of-hand snack food - from one food in storage, many uses. Example #2: Wheat has a storage life that far exceeds commercial bleached/unbleached flour. I can make more things out of wheat than you can ever make from flour alone - cooked whole kernels, cracked wheat, sprouted, meat-substitute, bulgur, flakes, farina, seed to grow more wheat, AND flour. PLUS, the whole grain is full of 25 vitamins, minerals and proteins, and all the fiber while commercial bleached/unbleached flour is essentially a "dead" food. Example #3: I store powdered tomatoes. It takes up less space than all the cans of tomato sauce, tomato paste, pizza sauce, and other tomato-based foods, but by reconstituting it with water and adding some herbs/spices and possibly a few other ingredients, it has LOTS of uses. The use-by date is if the food is stored at room temperature (70°F) or cooler. The cooler the storage temperature, the longer the food will keep even past use-by dates. Store canned goods in hot temperatures and the use-by dates are useless information because of the effects of the heat. -Grainlady

lol! We all go nuts when we start composting; & OP *said* wife yells at him! betcha he starts looking for something he never would have thought of looking for before: thrown-away food! On the Soil Forum, they get really excited about the middle of October, scoping out the houses that have pumpkins on the front porch, 'cause they know those things will be sitting at the curb the day after Halloween & then, after Thanksgiving, more pumpkins, & sometimes bales of hay. One of my favorite things to add to the compost is old beverages. Imagine the amount of lukewarm tea, flat sodas, warm fruit juice, cold coffee, etc, that goes down the drains every day. Buckets, either from the dollar store or re-purposed cat litter or pickle buckets or buckets from the bakery (they held icing), are excellent for handling the small amounts of "stuff" that we find ourselves holding, looking for a place to drop them other than in the trash; toss it all in a bucket, coffee filters & kleenex included, & take it to the pile once every day or so. It's amazing how much you'll reduce the volume of stuff you set out for trash pick-up. mahvelous! edited to say: Oh, wait a minute, I'm *on* the Soil Forum! thought I was still on the Texas Forum! This post was edited by sylviatexas on Mon, Dec 29, 14 at 13:19

I shop at Wegman's. Not only is the location the most convenient to me, but when you comparison shop, one store is cheaper on this but more expensive on that, so in the end it works out about the same. Since I know the layout, it's quick for me to shop there. The employees are friendly and helpful. i recently checked out a new Aldi. I made note of prices of items I usually buy. They were 49 cents cheaper on slivered almonds. The pineapples were a $1 cheaper, but also much smaller. The other prices weren't significantly lower. Much of the produce came pre-packed in quantities too large for my needs. The olive oils were all blended from olives from multiple countries. The store is not in a location I drive by or need to be near for any other reason. I don't buy cookies and chips, which was the largest aisle. All those factors mean I won't be shopping there. I'm sure it's a great place but it doesn't meet my needs.

My makeup takes up half a drawer. Half of it (the make up), i don't use because it was sent to me as part of a promotion or something. Little lipsticks, ( I don't use lipsticks anymore, only lip gloss/balm), bronzers, stuff like that..But it's a pity to throw them away, somehow. They're not opened and look new. Which they are, Waste of good stuff on me..Some, I can give to my DD, otherwise I don't know what to do with them. I also have a very sensitive skin, so I get attached to certain products only, and change it only if I suspect I became allergic to them. Creams, yes, I'd be using them all up, takes me time. Face cream..some last half a year, but some couple years. Blush, eyeshadows, also..it just takes me several years to finish them. They somehow never end..And I do use them. They just don't end. What can I say.