So I was at my parents’ house this past weekend and while she was making lunch my mother asked me to get something out for her. I opened the cupboard and while looking for the item she requested I noticed a box of “Kellogg’s Bran Buds” on the shelf.
I’m 35, and I remember that same box being in that same spot on the shelf since we moved into that house when I was 7, and I’m pretty sure that box was moved over from the old house.
“Mom, why do you still have this?” I asked her.
“It’s not even open! It’s still good!”
So what’s the oldest food your cupboard? It doesn’t necessarily still have to be edible, mind you.
I think you’re going to win. Your mom sounds like my grandma, only Grandma doesn’t care if something is wide open, covered in mold, and screams when you bite into it. It’s always “still good”. We just throw shit away when she’s not looking.
As for us, I think we have some cocoa powder that belonged to my mother-in-law. She died in 2007, the cocoa’s probably from 2004.
I’ve got a few bottles or tins of spices I brought with me when I moved from Washington to Panama in 1992. Some would be older than that. Of course, if I ever were going to make something that called for that spice I would buy fresh stuff, but I can’t bring myself to actually pitch them out.
My wife has a bunch of dried ingredients for Chinese cooking (e.g. dried mushroom, dried seaweed, dried sheets of tofu). She put them in a bag and moved them from her apartment to my apartment, then from my apartment to our condo, then from our condo to our house, all without ever opening the bag. By that timeline they’re at least 9 years old, but god only knows how old they were before I met her.
We have a can of Texas Ranch Style Beans in our pantry that was purchased in 1995 and has moved around with us ever since. It’s kind of an inside joke between us, though, so Im’ not sure if it counts.
Probably the ball o’ dried peppers our friend brought us from NM about three years ago. I clean out things fairly regularly, particularly dry goods like flour and other grains, open packages of crackers, etc.
A related question, what’s the oldest thing in your fridge? My aunt pulled a beer out for me that was left over from about 4 years ago. It was still drinkable.
I’ve mentioned before that I brought my big blue can of Morton salt with me when I moved to my current apartment in 1988. In several previous posts I’ve talked about how it’s getting low, and it will be sad when I need to replace it. But so far it’s still going strong 25 years later.
The oldest thing on my shelf is a quart jar of dried morel mushrooms. It’s about twenty five years old. Once in a blue moon I crumble some of them into my wonton soup for flavor. They still taste good.
The oldest thing in my refrigerator is a bottle of mineral oil, about twenty years old. I give a little to the cats if I think they have hair balls.
The oldest thing in my freezer is a very dried out package of pork patties. Every time I clean out the freezer I put it back. It was a gift from my parents probably fifteen years ago and they are both gone now. Not ready to toss it yet, I guess.
A half open box of tapioca that’s been in the pantry since the Clinton years. I see it when cleaning the shelves, think “oh, I’ve been dying for tapioca, I should make some”. Then it disappears behind taller things until the next annual clean-out.
I have a phial of ground saffron that is (at least) 30 yrs old. I acquired it in a share-house at that time, but it was previously owned by one of the other tenants.
When my husband and I first moved in together in 1990, I was a terrible cook. There were a lot of frozen foods that got us through those dark days. When we were packing and cleaning to move into a new apartment, we found a lone burrito at the bottom of the freezer bin. It moved with us.
To this day, my husband insists that it’s not only the Lucky Burrito, it’s the sole reason that our marriage has lasted this long and has been so happy. He’s cute like that.
We also have a hailstone the size of a grapefruit from May of 1997 somewhere in the freezer. But that’s probably not as edible as the 23 year old burrito.
That reminds me: I bought an 850 gram can of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee mini ravioli in the mid-90s that I forgot about. So I got up just now to take a look at it. To my surprise, it must have leaked from the bottom a couple of years ago because it was stuck to the shelf! :eek:
When I took over the kitchen after my mother passed away, I encountered some amazingly old stuff. Among them were some spices which, according to the labels, were made prior to Zip Codes. There might be one or two still evading my discovery.
Other than that, I still have a can of escargots that I brought back from Paris back in the '90s.