All men have their inner Icarus. Some men court death on far mountaintops. Some plumb the ocean’s depths. Me? I eat old vegetables. Really old vegetables. 20-year-old vegetables.
About five years ago, an aunt of mine passed away, and I inherited some of her worldly goods. Among them: many years’ worth of home-canned veggies, all neatly lined, row upon row, on basement shelves.
The vegetables looked good. I have been eating some of the more recent cannings regularly for the past five years, with no problems. They have been delicious!
But still sitting there, taunting me with their bright, just-canned colors, were the oldest offerings. Squash, okra, and green beans, languishing on the highest shelf. The canning date, neatly inscribed by my aunt with a black felt pen: 1990.
Ah, 1990! What times those were! George Bush the elder in the White House. Dana Carvey making fun of him on SNL. Across the pond, the Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher had just stepped down. Nobody outside Arkansas had much heard of Bill Clinton, and Dubya was just the President’s redneck playboy son. The internet had not yet addled the brains of the average citizen, and we got our Straight Dope on honest paper, as God intended. Roseanne Barr was the queen of television, but people were just starting to get hip to this weird Seinfeld show. Nobody outside Seattle knew what the hell “grunge” was.
As my aunt packed away the last of the summer’s veggies, that naughty Saddam Hussein was just launching his troops across the border into Kuwait.
Well, this thread reminded me of my ancient veggies, now perched on a top shelf in my own pantry. I’d never had the heart to throw them out nor the courage to eat them. So today I pulled some of them down. Still looking good. Bright yellows and greens. Checked the tops of the cans. A few spots of rust, but not rusted through. The seal held firm, and the tops were appropriately indented, which tells me nothing untoward is likely going on inside the jar. (If bacteria manage to survive the canning process, they manifest themselves by their gas output, which first pushes the indented lid up, then breaks the seal. Didn’t appear to have happened.)
So I pulled down a few jars and pried the lids off. They made the appropriate whooshing sound as the vacuum seal was broken. With some trepidation, I held each jar to my nose. The squash smelled…like squash! The okra still had the same strong scent that would have filled my aunt’s kitchen as she sliced and packed them. The beans were, well, beany.
So into the pot they all went! (Along with some broth, some fresh carrots, potatoes and celery, onions, and a more or less random selection of seasonings from the spice rack. Thirty minutes later, and I raise a spoon to my mouth…delicious! So I ladle out a bowl and scarf it down. Mmmmm. That hit just the right spot after a morning of yard work.
That was 6 hours ago, and I am happy to report, I have suffered no ill effects. Now I wonder just how long properly canned veggies can still remain good. Why wouldn’t they just stay good until the lid rusts through?
As you rummage through the basement of some old ruined house you will stumble across a cache of veggies that were canned decades before the Darkness fell. And then you will think back to this thread and say “Hmmmm…”