Out with the (Really) Old

Those of you who are connected to me on Twitter might have caught a message this past weekend about how I'd discovered cans of soup and vegetables with 2005 expiration dates in my cupboard. Yes, I am embarrassed about this.

The full story is that my husband and I decided to do an overhaul of our diets and went on a crazy-big shopping spree at Whole Foods on Sunday. (Remember that I normally get our groceries delivered from Peapod, so we're rarely confronted with aisles and aisles of food options. It was overwhelming, to say the least.)

When we returned home I emptied out all levels of our sole kitchen cupboard... which was when I was met with a few surprises. On top of the several cans of stuff that had either expired in 2005, 2007, 2009, or earlier this year, a tin of jam had leaked god knows when, and as a result there was a thick layer of black and sticky goop surrounding it. It took quite a while to clean that mess up, and involved a knife, a lot of paper towel, and several combinations of goop-be-gone sprays.

I went through my fridge as well, but I'm happy to report that aside from a tub of cottage cheese that was past due, most everything in there was still edible.

After I'd toss all the bad stuff and set aside a few cans of things we don't eat anymore (to give to a food shelter), my challenge became trying to figure out the best way to arrange all of our new purchases in the cupboard. You see, my husband is one of those people who does not think something exists unless he can see it. He's the guy who opens a new carton of OJ if the not-nearly-empty/already-open one is, say, hiding behind the water pitcher. He fully admits to this, but it makes it tough when there's literally no way to display everything we bought at the front of our shelves. Some things had to go in the back, and therefore he's going to have to remember that 1) we bought them in the first place, and 2) he has to spend a few seconds figuring out where they are. He's been traveling ever since our shopping excursion and is back tonight, so we'll see how he does with it all this weekend.

Here's how the cupboard look now. The shelves are pretty deep, and lots of goodies are hiding in the back. Let's hope it's not 2017 before we see them again.

- e