Pickles by Brian Crane for November 28, 2016

But the food pantry will still take it!

time to look really hard at the boxes’ and cans’ stamped expiry dates

Watch out for “bulgy” cans!

“Made in Cathay”. What the — ?

Back in 1996, I once saw a canned Haggis in my late uncle’s pantry with the expiry date 12/1976…still good?

Sounds like that TV show “Antique Pantry.”

Chickens you buy at the supermarket (they’re technically known as “fryers”) are about 6 or 7 weeks old…. a month and a half.

If you can even find a market that sells stewing hens,

which are the oldest chickens usually sold for food,

they’re well under a year old.

So a frying chicken would be only 7 or 8 months old when its great-great-grandchildren were already in a bucket of KFC…..

Even if all the generations were stewing hens, great-great Grandma might be 4 years old.

Better add some “greats” Earl.

Meanwhile, @thirdguy and anybody else considering donating old food….

PLEASE DON’T.

The food banks and food pantries have to waste precious volunteer hours sorting through donations

and throwing away anything out of date or already opened.

They legally and morally cannot give it to anyone to eat.

If you think that can of beans from 1992 might still be good….

eat it yourself.

If it’s NOT good, or if it’s marginal, or too scary…..

and you wouldn’t eat it…

it’s cruel, not kind, to try to feed it to those less fortunate.

When we cleaned out the pantry after my mother-in-law moved into assisted living we found items so old they didn’t have a UPC code on them.

Any McCormick spices (other than black pepper) that are in metal containers are over 25 years old.

Food banks tossing food that is past the best-by date is criminal, canned goods in particular. Most canned products are good for a decade past the best-by date.

My mum once tried to dose me up with Pepto-Bismal that was so old it had turned brown. The expiration date was about 5 years past, but “it was still sealed!” and she swore it was still good.

Why doesn’t Earl get his lazy butt busy and clean it out?

I bet I have spices that go back before I was married.. 45 years ago

Someone better clean it out before the food becomes alive like in Garfield.

Back in the mid-60’s when I was posted for a while, at Ft. Belvoir, Va. a buddy, working in one of the warehouses,discovered several of cases containing 5 lb. cans of coffee.dating back to 1951

I had “acquired” a 30 cup coffee urn for my office, so of course, we had to open a can and try it out. Surprise, surprise ! The coffee was not only drinkable, it was excellent ! Far superior to the stuff from the PX commissary or the supermarkets in Alexandria,

.

Word got out that I served great coffee, and suddenly, I became the most popular NCO on post !

I never told any one that they were drinking Korean War era Army coffee.

I remember that somewhere on the O.D. green cans, it said Maxwell House coffee. It certainly was “good to the last drop”!

Served as a "Mess cook’ aboard my first ship U.S.S.HECTOR AR-7 back in ‘63’…There was a box of frozen meat down in the reeferDated 1942….The Hector wasn’t commissioned until 1944…Hope it survived until De-Commissioning….

It’s not a food item, but I have a GE electric alarm clock, bought in the late 60’s, that has been through an apartment fire, has been dropped several times, no front bezel, plastic case cracked and broken in numerous places, that still keeps perfect time!

Earl knows most women have territory they begrudge outsiders such as husbands or other beasts of the male persuation.

I’m one of those who has all these pieces of paper in my bag and I almost never get round to clearing it out.

xxx

Buy no new food until the contents are depleted by Earl eating.

That way you will have fresher cans or fewer mouths to feed

Who hasn’t let this problem happen? I have tried very hard to make it a habit of going thru all my canned and boxes stuff periodically to weed out the old food. then I think…why did I even BUY this [item] if I was not going to use it up? Beats me!! I have to use a small LED flashlight to see the back of my pantry! Who knows what lurks back there??And don’t forget your OTC drugs, Rolaids get old too you know!

i put my “earthquake preparedness kit” together ten years ago — you think it’s time to check expiry dates on the canned food? How about the first aid supplies?

When we cleaned out my M.I.L.‘s place after she passed away (2010) we found government butter, red hots that my wife had put in the freezer when she still lived at home (30+ years ago) and home canned goods from the 70’s.

Once, a friend who worked at the local food pantry gave us some of those outdated cans. Well, having depression era parents, I couldn’t bring myself to toss the cans without at least opening and checking them. Pa-toooie! Lesson learned!

Hey now… I recently ate a can of Campbell’s Chunk Clam Chowder that had a 2014 expiration date and I didn’t die.