Saturday, February 14, 2015

What's that Smell in the Pantry?


I was so surprised to find my husband had removed all 
the pantry items and was cleaning the shelves.  How
thoughtful of him to tackle this for me, 
 out of the goodness of his heart, right?
Well . . . .  there is a little more to the story. 

Our kitchen pantry is almost 2 ft deep.  The lower door
comes 3/4 of the way up the refrigerator so there is 
a lot of storage in it.  Unfortunately, being 2 ft deep
it is hard to see what it in the back and when we
add items while unpacking the groceries, sometimes
things get caught way in the back.  I keep saying
that I want to move most of it downstairs to the shelves
but you know how it is, maybe we'll do that on a rainy day.

That rainy day came out without a drop of rain to be found.
My husband started smelling an unusual aroma.

Not a good sign.

He emptied everything and discovered a tin of fish had
broken open.   I'm so glad I was not home, I hate those 
little fishes in a tin.  He cleaned it up and then lined 
up the cans on our counter so I could select what we 
wanted to keep upstairs.


Wow, I thought I was pretty good at using up old product
but there must have been a sale on frosting.  I rarely make
cakes so what was I thinking????  These expired in 2013.  
If it were beans or corn I would  keep it.  The expiration dates  
are really Best By dates and I have confirmed this with 
Reverse Logistics Managers   of major corporations where we 
were discussing unsalables.   I won't mess with anything that is dairy 
 like though so out  these go!!  Too bad I was not better organized.

We have an area in the basement where we store items
that we have stocked up on, especially when there is a 
great sale.  Part of it is made of wooden shelves and 
the larger part is actually grocery store shelving we got
when our friend demo'd one of the local stores for remodel.
We've had them for about 20 years and still have some of the 
price tags on the end of the shelf. That will really give you
sticker shock when you compare it to today's prices!

We're low on coffee so I'll be watching for sales there too.
At one time I had about 20 of the large tins or containers stacked up
but now we've gone through most of it.  I have to be careful now
because some of the large cans have converted to paper tubing
and I don't trust that to keep fresh.  If I am not using it immediately,
it will be only the metal cans from now on.  Better to recycle
either at the centers or for personal storage.


For canned goods, I really like the Read salads and almost
anything Glory makes.  I'll try to find these on sale when I can.

Hubby took all my cans downstairs except for the few I wanted 
up here for use in the next couple of weeks.  I need to get back
downstairs and revamp the storage so everything is in date order.

I did find that the cheese sauce in boxed macaroni doesn't go 
bad as much as the flavor is drastically changed.  The noodles are fine
but I'll throw away the powdered cheese packets. For anything 
that is aging too far out, I'll set it aside and use it up quickly.

I also looked at the counter top freeze dryer and was hoping it
was similar in price to a dehydrator; however, anything I saw was
in the $4,000 category.  Too high for me!!  Maybe some day 
if they fall in price.  It's too bad we don't have a community kitchen
set up where people could come in and can, dehydrate or freeze dry
their food.  I would have looked into that had I won that $450 MM lottery!
Since my blog post was on cleaning the pantry, you can assume I did not win.

Now it's on to the sewing machine repair shop.  I have no idea what
I did but I hit a thick seam, the needle got stuck and when I tried to
free it, it broke.  It sewed a straight seem a day or so ago but when
I went to turn the corner (top stitching close to the edge) the fabric
caught again in the feed dogs and the bobbin just became a mess.

 I will break out a backup machine but want to get this Pfaff fixed
and ask him what I did wrong so I can correct it next time.

Happy Valentine's Day!





9 comments:

HIBISCUS HOUSE said...

wow busy bees....I know you are proud he cleaned that one up..I recently had to overhaul clean mine because every Fall when they cut the crops around the house we get little mice...stinky little mice...they can do a lot of damage...Great post..Happy Valentine's Day Kathy and Family!

GrowingUp-Again said...

Scary hold old things can get sometimes, huh? I recently found a box of animal crackers that never made it into a school lunch or after school snack. The little boy will be 21 next week... :)

Gorges Smythe said...

That's one of the dangers of prepping, I guess. It's hard to stay constantly organized.

Kathy Felsted Usher said...

I love the animal cracker story!!!!

Sunnybrook Farm said...

The chickens get a lot of our expired stuff, they don't seem to mind as they can handle just about anything.
I have a friend who writes dates on the can tops and then uses the oldest first, very organized, I think about doing it but haven't got that far yet. All of the stuff I can is dated though.

Harry Flashman said...

The ghost of the assassinated ground hog opened up that can of fish. He will stalk the pantry until his spirit is appeased!

LindaG said...

We always talk about what we'll do when we win the lottery, too.
If we ever buy a ticket, haha.
It's crazy how time flies and things get old before you realize.
We eat a lot of macaroni and cheese, so we don't usually have old packet cheese.

Have a blessed Sunday!

Kathy Felsted Usher said...

I shall make a monument to the Ground Hog and leave vegie scraps as a sacrifice. LOL

Powell River Books said...

Even with only a few cans in my storage area it is hard for me to use things up quickly. I do try to rotate the cans and packages if I buy new before the old is used up. Our Community Resource Center in Powell River purchased a large juice press machine that locals can sign up to use. That's the only thing I've heard that is cooperatively owned for multiple users. - Margy