With everyone stuck at home and trips outside restricted to a minimum, I’ve tried my best to not need to get groceries as much as possible. With that goal, I’ve been looking in my cupboards, fridge, and freezer to find things that I may have forgotten and that might still be edible. Borne out of necessity and possibly inspired slightly by “Jackass“, it’s been an interesting experiment.
In no particular order, here are some of the things I’ve attempted to consume. I wanted some crackers to put into a can of soup I heated up and noticed I had a box of saltines on my counter. The best before date on them was February of 2018. That doesn’t seem too bad right? One of the remaining sleeves of crackers was even unopened. I cracked open the packaging and smell the crackers inside. I immediately knew they were not good for consumption. The crackers smelled strongly of musky and old attic or basement. They had turned bad a long time ago.
I also found a package of blueberry muffin mix that I remember buying from the dollar store. The best before date was listed as 2016. This had the potential of being worse than the saltines. Upon opening the package up, the muffin mixed didn’t smell at all. It had the odour of flour or more accurately, muffin mix. I added some water, stirred it up a bit, and poured the mix into a cupcake pan. In it went into the oven. About twenty minutes later, I had fresh cupcakes. The cupcakes themselves were kind small, as they didn’t rise very much. They were also a bit dense inside, not as fluffy as I wanted them to be. I’m not sure if this was because it was just a cheap mix or that it was so far beyond the best before date. In any case, they were more than edible and I ate all six small cupcakes in a day and a half.
In the evenings, I sometimes have a large mug of green tea. I have a box of green tea bags which have a best before date of October 2018. The tea made from these tea bags tastes great, my very unrefined palate cannot discern much difference or detect anything off from these.
I don’t have a shortage of food products to continue to test. In my freezer are several containers of ice cream which I haven’t opened but some of them have best before dates that potentially go back to 2016. I’m a little apprehensive of trying this ice cream as I’m lactose intolerant and I’m not sure how safe old ice cream is. I have lactose enzyme pills but I will Google the safety of eating old ice cream before doing anything rash.