What unused items are sitting in the back of your food pantry you can’t bring yourself to throw out?

lol.

I'm not a hoarder or pack rat, but I have a similar problem with throwing stuff like that out.

It's not that I'm saving it exactly, it just seems like such a waste until it's for past the point of being usable that it feels like it okay to waste it.

Try cleaning out your medicine cabinet. I just did that one.

I threw out 4 boxes of bone broth yesterday after finding, to my disappointment, that they'd expired over a year ago. If they had been in cans, rather than cartons, I might have tested one out to see if they were really bad or not, but I'm pretty wary about giving myself food poisoning.

What do you guys think about expiration dates?

With the fridge, I pretty much always assume everything in it has gone bad, if it wasn't purchased/opened within the last 2 weeks.

Oh, please don’t ask, OP.

I’d imagine some DL’ers are far worse than others. Do tell?

Sometimes I don't throw things out because I think, "would I have not eaten this if I were in Auschwitz or Dachau?" I think I have a bag of really old coffee in my freezer that's there because of this reasoning.

But things get crowded and I have to toss something. Most recently it was some old, dried chickpeas, which I kept in a metal cookie container from TJ's. And also, some years-old Japanese bread crumbs.

I have some really crappy tuna fish in the fridge—Starkist, I think—but I apply the concentration camp logic every time I think of tossing it: "Would Mr. Rosenthal have loved to come upon this when he was in Auschwitz?" And it immobilizes me.

Tangential: our family has a lake cottage in Ontario. At best, it's occupied two months out of the year.

A couple of summers ago, I went through the spice cabinet. We had stuff (nutmeg, cinnamon) that expired in the early 80s. The packaging was VERY dated but charming.

Same with the medicine cabinet -- Band-Aids, Q-Tips, Skin so Soft -- all dating to the 1980s.

It was like entering a time machine!

(And yes, I threw out the expired stuff.)

I have an unopened bottle of jalapeno ketchup that's about five years old, and a couple packages of chocolate chips. I keep meaning to make chocolate chip cookies, but have yet to get around to it. But chocolate keeps practically forever, so I hang onto them.

I have a bunch of these old Ocean Spray drink mix packets in various flavors that I can’t bring myself to toss even though they’re long expired. I hoarded up when they were discontinued and was using them sparingly to make them last but it’s to the point I should throw them out.

I think my mom had some odd Durkees spices in dated looking metal tins from the 60s into the 80s. I had I small can of Safeway Crown Colony allspice that I must have had for 15 years before I threw it away - I hadn’t lived in Safeway territory since 1998. It’s silly not to throw it out because it loses its potency after a few months but I kept it just in case I ever needed it again. I also had a tube of “umami” I bought at Trader Joe’s out of curiosity but I could never find a use for it. When it expired I opened it to see what it tasted like then threw it out.

[quote]I also had a tube of “umami”

¿Cómo? ¿Quiene es mami?

Oh, nothing much.

Andy Warhol-inspired Campbell’s soup can and fig paste. And tons of flour. Probably the equivalent of five of those small bags.

Ugh! I just look and there’s a dusty coffee mug filled with those free lollipops you get at banks, which I always took but never ate. I must have kept putting them in the mug and at some point shoved the whole thing back there. Must have been years ago because sugar is all oozing and seeped through the paper. I can’t believe the ants didn’t move in. Out!

This has inspired me to clean my cupboards this weekend. Who knows what treasures I’ll find?

YES! This expensive cake mix from Sur La Table- Its by Baked and is "Happy Birthday Confetti" and was around 15.00. It involves "egg whites" and "buttermilk" so I never took the time to make it.. I actually purchased buttermilk yesterday, but I realized that the mix expired in November of 2017!!!

EXPIRED! Expired! EXPIRED!

R17 - I admit - I'm just like that aunt in the Geico commercial. I go through refrigerators and cupboards like that a couple times a year - drives my partner nuts, but the first time through I found a lot of stuff from 2007-2012.

That's just gross.

Pointless DL threads

We want to be underwhelmed.

I have 2 cans of "foul mudammas," Egyptian fava beans, I got at an international grocer--probably five years ago. Are they still okay? Why don't I just eat them--I like them! I think OP is right and there is something psychological about it.

Shouldn't the Auschwitz rule be that you eat it right then? I never put a name to it, but when I think of my ancestors I hate to waste food.

I had a box of bay leaves at our cottage that had a 19 cent purple-inked price sticker on it. Must have been 40 yrs or more. Also vanilla extract with unmistakable 70's font on the label.

Bullion cubes galore! Solidified, oily and disgusting. Goodbye.

This thread is making me laugh!

Roughly twenty boxes containing various new fangled cooking devices, ranging from a bagel maker to a falafel ball presser. All of them are opened, used once or twice, then put back in their original boxes after they sat on the counter unused over a year. Thank good I put them back in their original packaging... for when I move one day. But I won’t. Who will dust them off and decide what to do with them once I die?

R25 No one. They’ll eventually place your urn of ashes back there too, once it sits on the counter unused for over a year.

I think the dry onion soup was ok to keep and use for dip! No shame!

Lots and lots of unused boxes of sugar-free Jell-O. Very old. I think I was convinced it was the secret to loosing weight at one point.

[quote] it was the secret to loosing weight

Oh, dear.

Lots of cans of Campbell’s cream of chicken soup. It’ll get eaten!

Spam! I have many cans stashed for an extreme emergency.

I will *never* clear out the back of my food pantry. Too gargantuas of a task. Like cleaning. An old attic. There are so many things back there. God knows how old. I’ve officially become my grandmother.

The fridge is a different story.

The Lindbergh baby.

We used to tease my mom about never removing old food from the back of the pantry.

She’d always snap back, “If I smell something or it starts to crawl, I’ll throw it out. Otherwise shut up!”

My neighbor Belva is gone, rest her soul. But I'll always have the can of Libby's canned pumpkin she gave me to remember her by.

You want names or just descriptions?

Zuul

Health Valley Low Sodium Vegetarian Chili

All my Janet Jackson CDs

A doorway to Narnia

Many gifted food items, mostly Christmas gifts... mostly jarred preserves and homemade ground spices from people’s gardens. It lovely but stuff that I know I’ll never eat but don’t have the heart to throw out. And yes there’s a fruitcake back there.

R27, even onion soup mix gets old--I had no shame and put it in some fresh sour cream and it ruined it. Too bad because the soup was an heirloom I'd had for 10 years.

[quote] ranging from a bagel maker to a falafel ball presser.

[quote]Who will dust them off and decide what to do with them once I die?

You want us to worry about your ball presser?

Sorry, Miss, I’ve got problems of my own.

Bunya Bunya nuts. They were $150 per pound, I didn’t use them, and they’re staying there until I climb the six foot ladder. Maybe they’ll increase in value as they age.

I really do not want to go digging around back there.

I keep useless objects of all kinds, but not food and pantry items. I have never-used cooking tools of every fucking kind. But no weird things in the back of my pantry. I surely have wine in my cellar that's gone off but that's sort of the nature of a wine cellar. I do systematically throw out wine that I know doesn't age well. But there are reds and some Chardonnays, Sémillons and Arintos that you never know until you open them.

I just cleaned out my pantry as well and found three expired boxes of coconut Jello pudding mix. No memory of buying them. Why coconut, and why so many? The mind boggles.

I have a can of something called "Tuno" that I accidentally bought at Sprouts. I thought I was buying wild caught tuna, but it's some kind of vegan product with soy. The thought of it disgusts me, but if shit hits the fan over the next few months and I run out of everything else, it's there as a last resort.

My sister has a solid strategy for the apocalypse.

She has a survival box of canned goods, water, pasta etc. Each year, she donates the entire box to food drives, then replaces the items in the box.

It's simple and effective.

[quote] Why coconut, and why so many? The mind boggles.

I love stories like this. Many times I’ve found things in my house and thought “what the fuck was I thinking when I bought this?”