It’s been almost three years since I moved into my current apartment and in that time I have not done a full and thorough clean out of the food cooling appliance in my kitchen. I have, however, cleaned the insides of the freezer and the lower compartment, including all the trays and crispers. What I haven’t done is thrown out all the bottles, containers, and frozen items that need to be discarded. That’s not to say I have items dating back three years in my fridge. I’ve just accumulated stuff over time and most of it needs to go.
I started with the non-frozen items this evening. I managed to identify some items that were no longer safe for human consumption. There was an unopened bottle of thousand island dressing. Though unopened, it was well past its expiry date of 2010. There was a bottle of BBQ sauce. This was opened, perhaps used twice, maybe thrice but also beyond its expiry date. There was a bottle of green salsa. I’d consumed most of this but I left enough in the glass bottle for mold to grow inside. Gross. There was the squeeze bottle of french dijon mustard. I believe I had bought this to eat my Montreal smoked meat sandwiches with. There was a lot of this left but no visible mold. As it was years beyond the expiry date, it had to go. For some reason, I’d purchased a bottle of Italian salad dressing. I’m not even a big fan of that dressing yet here was a bottle of it. The expiry date had long passed so it was tossed.
I didn’t have enough time to properly assess the freezer compartment but I did do a quick scan. Here are some definite candidates: a package of frozen ground beef that probably dates back to 2010 or earlier, some frozen dumplings, frozen vegetables, and frozen edamame beans.
I should probably throw stuff out a bit earlier.