The other day, my brother-in-law told me that when he met my sister, she didn’t know that mayonaise has an expiration date. Me either. But, damn, when I checked, I found out the mayo in my fridge was “best by” June 2005. Of course the tuna I made with that mayo the other day didn’t kill me. But now I won’t have to worry about the nasty food lurking in the fridge, and neither will you.
Timestrips are labels you put on your food to remind you to throw it out when the “best if used by” or “eat before” date arrives, or when that leftover Chinese food becomes a science experiment, whether that’s in one day or six months. Fifty Timestrips are about $14.
And the British Egg Council will soon launch the self-timing egg by Lion Quality Egg Producers. “We are still perfecting the technology, but we are very excited at the prospect of sorting a problem that has wound people up at breakfast time for decades,“ said Gilly Beaumont of B&H Colour Change, speaking in perfect PRese.
It goes into the water blank and the Lion logo appears as if by magic telling you if the egg is soft, medium or hard cooked.
But an egg seller at the farmer’s market told me the real secret to the perfectly boiled egg:
Put the egg in a pan. Cover the with water. Bring to a boil with the lid off the pot. When the water boils, turn off the flame, cover the pot. Five minutes makes a spectacular hard boiled egg. Never fails.
Then there are RipeSense labels, which show when fruit is ripe by changing color in reaction to aromas released as fruit ripens. Sounds silly, but apparently apple growers in the US lose about $300 million a year from fruit going bad. Growers will test the labels on this year’s crop according to the NY Daily News, and Redi-Ripe produce could be in stores in about a year.
