'by date' horror

So, I had some store-made crab cakes and a can of crab meat and I thought I'd add some more crab meat to the filling of the store-made cakes. I opened the can and gave Luke, the cat, the water out of the can. He began to drink it like it were the water of life...and I checked the used by date of the crab.

It was 6/13/09--which, having 4 degrees like I do, I knew meant June 13, 2009--which is 4 years and two months ago.

First you might wonder how anyone could have something that old in their can goods cabinet. And I couldn't tell you. Maybe because we use crab meat, when we use it, from the chilled section. And we probably could have used that crab meat a dozen times, but we got fresh instead.

So, why did we buy it in the first place? I have no idea. I would say Bern bought it and she would probably say that I bought it and we'd be back to the conversation about who needs to go to 'the home' first and I don't want to go there.

I tasted it after Bern smelled it and ruled it 'probably ok' and I thought the texture was wrong and I'm the one who won't eat chicken three days after it was cooked anyway. Bern believes in a much longer 'shelf life' than I do. I'm constantly asking Bern if she thinks this or that in the refrigerator is still good. She always says yes and half the time I throw it out anyway.

And I certainly wasn't going to eat crab, of all things, four years out of date.

If Luke dies tonight, I'll know I was right. But I don't want him to die, so I hope I'm wrong and my crab cakes would have more tasty than they were and I would have been happier about dinner than I was.

But who knows....4 years and 2 months is too long a stretch for me and I don't think I'm being unreasonable about that....