So, I move out of my dorm on Saturday. As I begin packing up, I’m absolutely amazed by the amount of stuff I’ve accumulated - I’m going to have to rent a storage place in town with some friends, and it may not be as roomy as we expect. Sure, there are the obvious things I have no need for at home over the summer: My rug, bedsheets and blankets, comfy chair, fridge, curtains, down jacket, all my sweatshirts, an obscene number of books, and so on. There’s the fact that I have not one, not two, but three decorative tins in my room full of stuff. Two backpacks, too. Two plastic milk crates, bedside lamp, brita pitcher, iron and mini-ironing-board…all sorts of stuff.
All of that is utterly beside the point, actually, but I find it slightly bewildering. Anyway: I’m attempting to consume the rest of my stash of food, so I don’t need to make the choice between “risk putting a half-full jar of peanut butter in my suitcase” and “waste perfectly good snacks”. I discovered, way on the back of my shelf, a box of breakfast bars (think NutriGrain, only Wal-mart brand, because I’m a Broke College Student). Which I purchased in November. There are still three in there.
Hmm…I wonder.
Still. Perfectly. Good.
I eat a lot of processed food, but somehow, eating a six-month old bread-type product just sort of creeps me out.
That’s nothing… when I was cleaning out a coworker’s cubicle after he left last month for bigger and better things (lucky guy), I found a box of microwave popcorn.
“Hmmm” says I. “Always nice to have a little bit of snack food around for emergencies, maybe I’ll keep these for myself.”
Well, last week, I got hungry and though I might pop up a bag. Until I saw the expiration date printed on the plastic cover.
It’s true; one thing scarier than finding ancient, decaying food is finding ancient, pristine food.
When I was moving out of college, I discovered that I had (in a typical male-college-student move) left half a loaf of bread in a secret cupboard at the base of my shelves for a good six months. It was quite thoroughly green, and had teeming life forming on its surface. Unpleasant though this undoubtedly was, at least it wasn’t still in good shape.
So yeah, as far as eating the remaining foodstuffs - I’d give it a swerve.
I came home for the summer on Saturday. It’s amazing the amount of crap I’d accumulated! I Once I’d thrown away all the stuff I didn’t need anymore I managed to fit it into the car though.
I recently found a forgotten loaf of white bread purchased when I was pregnant and queasy a lot. It was on the back shelf of the panty (not refrigerated!) and in absolute pristine condition.
I was at my friends grandmothers house and my friend asked me if I wanted something to drink, I opted for hot chocolate, went to get it out of the cupboard and noticed something strange…Wait what is this??? June?? Oh well it’s only August…What the devil?? June 1995???
I once kept a loaf of white Wonder bread in my pantry for eight months when I was in law school.
At the time I bought it, I still had a few slices left on the previous loaf, and I really wasn’t in the mood to eat a whole lot of bread, so the new loaf sat for a couple of weeks while I very slowly finished the old one. It was at that point that I noticed that the new, unopened loaf hadn’t gone bad, so I decided to perform a little experiment. I left it there, undisturbed, until it went bad. Well, damn if that loaf didn’t finish the friggin semester with me.
I was cleaning out my car about two weeks ago and came upon a can of Pringles in the trunk. I know they had been there since at LEAST October, since I got rear-ended that month and hadn’t bothered to wash/clean out my car since. It was a nearly full can, opened but in good condition. I put them in the kitchen cabinet and my brother ate them all by the next day. I told him that they were over 6 months old and he said he didn’t even notice.
Twinkies *do * go stale. Back in my schoolgirl days one box managed to hide in the back of the pantry for a good two years. Mom put one in my lunch bag, thinking it was a new box she’d opened. I didn’t notice anything different until I bit into it at lunch and it was a bit chewy and flat tasting.
So Twinkies have a shelf life and it appears to be something less than two years in a hot garage pantry.
It is not advised to lose a bottle of ketchup in the trunk of your car. It can burst/ooze from the heat and then become a sort of fuzzy, scabby, sticky Baby Blob that I’m pretty sure was pleading for it’s life at one point.
You were lucky. I found out Twinkies can go not just stale but bad. I once came across a box of Twinkies in my boyfriend’s cupboard. I didn’t realizes they were there FROM THE PREVIOUS TENANT! Apparently whatever that is in the middle of a twinkie it is in fact some king of organic material because it CAN spoil.
I’ve never been able to look at another Twinkie since (so some good came out of it :))
I think Dinaroozie has a point though…somehow more reassuring than if they were truely eternal.
Just before Halloween of 2003, I found a half bag of Reese’s Peanut Butter cups on the dining room table. Cool. I grab one, open it up a take a good size bite. Hmmmphh. The chocolate had a chalky texture and was very stale. The peanut butter part, though a bit dry, didn’t taste too bad. I spit it out and rinsed my mouth out with water. On the bag, just under the part that says Best Before, it said Nov 00. My step daughter had brought by a box of Halloween decoration and the bag of candy was in the box. She forgot to throw them away.
The only product I find myself keeping for long periods of time is skim milk. I keep forgetting to drink it but it keeps a long time. Whole milk (ew, like drinking cream!) seems to go off really fast.
At my work, a couple years before I started there. One of the employees was fired/quit/laid off or whatever after working there for a few years. They emptied out his desk, and then opened up his computer, which was too old to still be useful, to scavenge it for parts.
