Monday's Breakfast - 'Expired' Oatmeal

Mondays, as we’ve mentioned many times before, is trash day. The weekly sweep this weekend included some of our deeper cupboards. When we do the fridge weekly, anything moldy gets tossed and anything slightly questionable gets cooked up on Mondays. The deep cupboards often go much longer than they should without being checked, but the need is not as great with shelf stable products. Since tossing good product makes us sad, and being wasteful is not an ideal way to start out the week… here we go again.

Let’s check what we found this week. It’s a single serve container that was left over from a camping trip last summer. Since today is January 22nd (2019) and the Best Before date reads “MAR 22 18”, this little package is going on a year since it would have been on its best behavior (according to the manufacturer). Following is what we found.

expired oatmeal

'Expired' Oatmeal

Testing 'Expired' Oatmeal

expired oatmeal

First we checked out the ingredient label. If this had been straight oatmeal, we probably wouldn’t have even bothered to check the best if used by date because straight up oatmeal is a dried grain that can last for years. The ingredients in this oatmeal medley included oatmeal, dried fruits, nuts and sugars. All those items on their own last a good long time, so we were ready for this challenge.


expired oatmeal

Opening this “expired” Oatmeal Medley package, was just like opening any other such package. There was no strange odor, nothing extra in the contents, all colors looked as they should and each texture was appropriate. So, we boiled some water and added it into the container. After a few minutes of wait time it was “go time”. Check out how it looked:


expired oatmeal

It actually looked quite delicious. Look how the dried fruits plumped! Even though I’m not a big fan of walnuts, which is actually why it was still in the cupboard almost a full year after the best before date, it was indeed quite delicious! We give this “expired” product a big thumbs up.

Additional Info

For more information on oatmeal, see our oatmeal post.

To see another Monday breakfast, check out these “expired” rolls.

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To find out how long other foods are good for, please visit the Dairy, Drinks, Fruits, Grains, Proteins, Vegetables and Other sections of Eat By Date or use the search function below.

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