Just to inform South American Spanish speakers that to be a chorizo in Spanish from Spain means to be a thief or a crook. The right way to say that would be soy un chorizo, but we say es un chorizo - meaning someone else is a crook, not us - much more often.
You know the joke about the wife saying “go to the bakery and buy a bread, and if they have eggs, buy six” and as they had eggs I bought six breads? Something like that happened to me, only whith croissants.
It’s self imposed principle, for sure, and I think the filters are like a buck. They say reusing is the best form of recycling but those poor filters never got used the first time. And it’s not like I’m scraping cheese off to reuse a pizza box.
Say, can I interest anyone in my newly announced series of disposable liners for automotive cupholders? Lily white, attractive pleating.
I bet if you spent 1 person-hour on each embroidering them with $5 worth of embroidery floss each, you could sell them for, IDK, a quarter a piece.
Some Doper will happily try that project. Not me.
It happens to me all the time, especially at unfamiliar stores. Because I want to minimize the amount of time I spend in any store, I rarely stop to read labels. The idea is to get in and out as fast as possible. After I get home and realize my mistake, if it’s edible or potable, I’ll hold my nose and consume it. If it’s something really disgusting like artificial sweeteners or skim milk, I’ll usually just throw it out. Returning it to the store isn’t worth it because I live so far away. I consider the waste to be an acceptable cost of my method which really does save a lot of time over carefully reading every label.
I’m fairly good at reading labels. But if the mismatch is subtle or I am grabbing a pile of stuff from a place where most are labelled correctly, I’m apparently not quite as good.
I’ve done that. And when I needed individual creamers (to take somewhere without refrigeration), I’ve accidentally bought a sweetened type when I wanted non-sweetened.
Well, it is now (in the USA). I wouldn’t count on that continuing here, what with the general ‘let’s free businesses from burdensome regulation’ atmosphere.
I would find it odd if you thought that taking the time to read the labels while you were in the store wasn’t a good use of your time, but driving back to the store in hopes of doing an exchange was.
If I bought the wrong thing through my own careless error, I would probably not try getting a refund or exchange—definitely not if it was something they couldn’t resell. Partly because I wouldn’t want the hassle, partly because I’d be too embarrassed, but mostly because it seems like a dick move to make someone else eat the cost of my own mistake.
Coffee filters make great superfine strainers (of anything that you might otherwise strain using a paper towel or tea towel, etc.). And a box of 200 of them isn’t going to take up much storage room, and is never going to go bad. No need to psych yourself up into throwing away something like that; it’ll come in handy someday and be essentially no trouble to deal with in the meantime.
Bonus Kimstu yogurt cheese recipe: Whack a coffee filter into a fine mesh strainer, dump some full-fat plain yogurt into the filter, plop a china bowl into the yogurt to weight it down some, set the strainer over a larger bowl, leave in fridge overnight.
You now have some delicious tangy creme fraiche/cream cheese type stuff that can be flavored and used for all sorts of eating purposes. Plus some expressed whey that adds tangy flavor and a tiny bit of casein smoothness to soups and stews and what not.
Many years ago, I worked with a woman who had purchased some TV dinners, back in the day when you peeled off the foil, and all of them were moldy. She put them in a bag and returned them to the store, piping hot mold and all! She did get a refund.
A while back, I picked up a can of Ro-Tel tomatoes with habanero, not jalapeno. I didn’t think to read the label until I took it out of the cupboard to use it, and while I did eat whatever I made with it, that stuff made my scalp sweat! I’m MUCH more cautious now.
As for the skim vs. fuller fat milk, could it be used in cooking, or partialed out and frozen, or even offered to a friend or neighbor?
An item like Country Crock, or yogurt for that matter, shouldn’t go bad in a month if it’s stored properly.
It happens on occasion and it’s usually because the packaging looks so similar to the regular product. Mrs. Odesio recently bought what she thought were extra toasted Cheez-Its but they were some other variation.
Somewhat the opposite here. I like V-8, and one day reached for it without looking carefully. When I got the groceries home, I realized that I had bought the spicy V-8 instead of the original that I expected. (Turned out that the supermarket had shuffled all the varieties of V-8 on the shelf, for some reason.)
Well, might as well give it a try. To my surprise and delight, I loved the stuff! A serendipitous error indeed. Now, the spicy V-8 is pretty much the only kind of vegetable cocktail I’ll buy. Oh, I’ll buy the original if the supermarket is out of spicy, but that rarely happens.
Liberal return policies (like Nordstrom in the “old days”) used to get my goat, but there are so many ways in which prices are inflated (bonus points, membership clubs, coupons, etc.) I’ve done myself the favor of not giving a shit any more.
Back before I retired, I’d bring mistaken purchases in to work. We had a table in our breakroom which was designated as the “free stuff” table. Assuming the food item wasn’t refrigerated, we’d put the unwanted bags of chips, cookies, crackers, regifted candies, etc., on the table and it’d all be eaten up in a few days. At least they didn’t go to waste.
Unfortunately as I’ve gotten older my tolerance for spicy foods has declined. Which is a shame, because I used to like a little kick in my food. I still occasionally treat myself to Indian and Mexican food, but I have to check the ingredients and descriptions to avoid high-octane peppers. I’ve also found that Saffron Road frozen dinners are not too spicy, but Chef Bombay frozen dinners have a higher heat factor.
Country Crock is supposed to have a “Use by” Date (not “best by”) that is 9 months from when it was manufactured. Or at least what I can research on the Internet tells me that. So it doesn’t seem to be a “best by” date (which you can add a bunch of time to). That said, it’s not like the foodstuff magically goes bad on that date. I’d have no problem using it a bit past that date as long as it smelled and looked okay.
That Country Crock that I complained about is now two months pass the use-by date. It seems to taste ok, and we’re going to use it all up; that shit is crazy expensive.
Not as expensive as butter. I wish me or the kids liked the stuff, but I gotta go hunting for butter sales. We don’t go through that much of the stuff — like a stick, stick and a half — per week, so it’s not too bad with the overall bill.
I’m the opposite. The Genova brand yellowfin or albacore tuna in olive oil is great; the water-packed stuff is gross.
And yes, despite the different colored cans, I’ve occasionally ended up with the wrong stuff in my cart. 
My complaint about tuna in oil or water is the can is ~40% oil or water and only ~60% tuna. IOW it costs nearly double per pound versus the headline price. Bastards. It’s doubly vexing since we’re mostly buying the clean trimmings, not even the prime center part of the fish. You’d think they’d be willing to sell the scraps for a fair price. Nope.
My husband, who does most of the grocery shopping, has a billion food allergies and thus no actual idea what normal people eat. I’ve sent him to the store for salsa and gotten marinara sauce. “Same thing, right?"
He claims ignorance on all kinds of regular food. And he routinely accidentally gets stuff that’s gluten free or low fat or pretend meat or otherwise terrible. I once asked for a chocolate bar and I got one that was 95% cacao. That one I made him sample so he could see what he’d done.
Still prefer him doing it, though. I loathe grocery shopping.