Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

This really is a full service blog.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Not all heroes wear capes.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Let there be snark.

You cannot shame the shameless.

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

This fight is for everything.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / 8/24 Twin Cities Meetup, Thoughts on Stored Food & Open Thread

8/24 Twin Cities Meetup, Thoughts on Stored Food & Open Thread

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August 24 Twin Cities Meetup

Per a request from valued commenter imonlylurking, here’s notice of an upcoming Twin Cities meetup on August 24:

We didn’t really decide on a time so I’m thinking 3 or 4, and the location suggestions were Bulldogs, Sawatdees (Robert and 9th), and Shamrocks. We should finalize time and location-I can be there early to hold a space.

Leave your time and location preferences in comments below so that you Twin Cities folks can reach a consensus in what will undoubtedly be a Minnesota Nice fashion.

The Delights and Dangers of Food Storage

clinton_ham

In 2004, we had a series of hurricanes in Central Florida. One (Charley, I think) knocked out our power for awhile. We lost a few shingles, and the storm tore up the soffit under the roof overhang on one side of the house, but aside from the lack of air-conditioning, we were fine in the aftermath, having laid in plenty of supplies, including bags of ice in big marine coolers where we could store our fridge stuff until power was restored.

One lady I worked with had a deep freezer that she hadn’t cleaned out in several years. During the power outage, she found a ham wedged in a corner that had been welded in place by permafrost. When the ham thawed, she found a “sell or freeze by” date from 1997!

She asked me if I thought she should throw it out, and I said fer chrissakes YES, she should throw out that Clinton administration ham and under no earthly circumstances eat it. I stressed that when she bought that ham, my second-grader had not yet been born. I asked how she could possibly contemplate eating a ham that had been wedged in a freezer for as long as it took for a child to be conceived, born, learn to walk, talk, ride a bike, read and write and complete three years of school?

But she ignored that sound and heartfelt advice and cooked and ate that fucking ham. And she not only failed to sicken and die, every day she came to work talking about the awesome ham and split pea soup she made from the leftovers, and the ham salad sandwiches and homemade Moons over My Hammy, etc.

I’m not like that at all. I’m no germ-phobe; I’ll eat at dodgy restaurants and drink milk several days past its expiration date if it smells okay. But there is nothing in my freezer from the goddamn Bush administration.

Yesterday I went on a fridge-cleaning binge purely by accident. We had run out of normal garbage bags for the kitchen bin a few days back, and no one can seem to remember to pick some up when they visit the store, so we’ve been collecting trash in recycled grocery bags.

I decided to take several of these to the big trash can outside, using some giant, sturdy contractor bags we have leftover from our slow-mo home renovations. It seemed a waste to dispose of the bag only half filled, so I went on a rampage through the fridge and freezer and threw out so much crap — half-filled bags of old frozen peas, etc. I feel awful about wasting food and try to be fairly frugal, but it just accumulates.

Do you have any method to keeping your fridge and freezer under control? Any rules about the age of the frozen stuff you’ll still eat? Please feel free to discuss this or whatever else you find interesting at the moment.

[Image credit: Bijijoo]

Reader Interactions

119Comments

  1. 1.

    c u n d gulag

    Uhm…
    When you’re not financially well-off, leaving food in the freezer too long, really is the least of your concerns.

    Having said that, there’s a big old ham in the freezer that I bought in May when it was on sale, but this summer’s been too hot to bake that big old ham.

    But I look forward to plenty of baked big old ham and potato’s baked in that big old ham fat, big old ham sandwiches, and split-pea and big old ham soup, after Labor Day.
    And I’ll freeze the left-overs, until October.

  2. 2.

    TheMightyTrowel

    We only shop for planned meals and freeze very little. all food waste gets composted and turned into herbs and garlic in our garden.

  4. 4.

    MomSense

    Giant, male offspring who are hollow and require large quantities of food and drink every 20 minutes or else they perish from starvation.

    Yeah, the only old thing in the frig is the jar of capers.

  6. 6.

    sparrow

    I’m in the same boat Betty. I think it’s a genetic disease I inherited from my mother (hoarde-itis). I hate throwing stuff away, so I always use the excuse “I MIGHT eat it eventually” which is pretty silly. I’m not a hoarder in other areas, fortunately. But my fridge and freezer are packed nightmares.

    It absolutely drives my boyfriend nuts, too. He’s tried to influence me to calm things down (and I’ve caught him tossing stuff), but to not much success I’m afraid.

    I DO think the best thing is to just shop for planned meals, and no more than 2 at a time. I used to shop for a whole week because the “good grocery store” was clear accross town, and on a good week it would work out ok. But on a bad week? Rotten veg city. :(

  8. 8.

    eric nny

    I’ll pretty much eat anything from the freezer no matter the age as long as it doesn’t move under its own power after thawing.

  11. 11.

    MattF

    Personally, I tend to trust some combination of instinct, smell and look. My sister, on the other hand… she needs to be watched and stopped in the act. One Thanksgiving, the stuffing wasn’t working out in a positive way, and, well, the freezer had a whole medley of petrified stuffings from Thanksgivings past. My BIL and I said no, no, no.

  14. 14.

    Everett

    BC: Don’t throw out those frozen veggies that smell like the inside of an ice cave. Rather, give them to your chickens. Our girls love all the bite-sized veggie bits, and don’t seem to have any qualms about a little (or a lot of) freezer burn.

  15. 15.

    Punchy

    In 2008, I discovered some Kraft Mac n’ Cheese boxes in the back of a cabinet that had a “Use by” date of 1996. Just for slaps and tickles, I fired up a round of first term Clinton Noodles while watching an Obama speech and pretended that Bush had never happened. Stuff tasted reasonably average.

  16. 16.

    p.a.

    I’ve eaten stuff frozen up to 6 years, except fish. I am conscientious about fish.
    For organization, I use the large spiral bound index cards. I write the categories in pen and the quantities in pencil. Leave the pencil in the spiral, and make changes as needed. I’ve found this easier than using my smartphone memo pad. But maybe there’s an app.

  18. 18.

    Face

    drink milk several days past its expiration date

    This drives me crazy. Huge pet peeve. It’s NOT an expiration date, it’s a “sell by” date. It doesn’t actually go bad for several days/a week afterwards. I cannot tell you how many needless gallons of udder juice the g-friend has pitched simply b/c of this mistake.

  19. 19.

    beltane

    My mother is a hoarder of food and just about everything else. Whenever she visits she brings the children “treats” that are way past the sell-by date. We have a large compost pile so it’s the not the end of the world except as being a reminder of the Herculean labor that will be required of me to clean her apartment when she passes.

  23. 23.

    Jay C

    Dunno – for some reason fridge/freezer archaeology has never been much of a problem for us: in the city, we order out a lot (and have a minimalist freezer in any case), in the country we (well, I) shop fresh a lot. A few simple rules: think about what you need, and don’t buy (too much) more: resist the temptation to stock up on “bargains” – especially large sizes (I still recall the odor emanating from a “bargain” 15-liter tin of olive oil which spent the last six or seven years of its life under our sink – or rather the 13-14 liters that remained – yuck); periodically do a rummage through the food-storage zones to weed out the primevals.

    OK: that said, I just checked the sell-by on our final bottle of Heinz One-Carb ketchup (which they don’t make any more): as I expected, five years past. But it still tastes fine: I don;t know if we should worry….

  24. 24.

    beltane

    @Jay C: A 15 liter tin of olive oil would only last about a year in my house. I guess the moral of the story is that it only makes sense to buy large quantities of things you use large quantities of. Our big freezer died last year and I have no intention of replacing it because it just seemed to invite waste.

  25. 25.

    Amir Khalid

    @Jay C:
    If by this time tomorrow you aren’t puking your guts out, you’re probably OK. That’s my rule of thumb.

  27. 27.

    schrodinger's cat

    I usually don’t freeze meat or cooked food. I sort stuff out in plastic stackable baskets. I just threw out the cookie dough, I had left over from Christmas. It was still good, but am not too fond of sweet things and am trying to get back in shape.

  29. 29.

    debbie

    I’m with you on the dating. If I have anything long enough (which is rare), I’ll toss if the date’s past.

    But the real problem is contamination. I’ve been sick 6 times in the past couple of years after eating fresh vegetables, fruits, and meat. Twice I’ve just swallowed, for instance, a mango when the mango recall announcement comes on the news.

  30. 30.

    beth

    My problem is a kid who becomes obsessed with eating/drinking a certain brand of something, whereby I find a great deal on said item and stock up which is exactly the moment she decides she doesn’t care for it anymore. That’s how you wind up with ten boxes of cinnamon teddy grahams in your pantry, damnit.

  32. 32.

    NotMax

    Anyone remember those plaid Scotch brand coolers that came with sealed cans (also with a plaid design) one would freeze and place into the cooler?

    My family still has one.

    The number of freezable cans never seemed sufficient, so sometime around 1957 or thereabouts a can of Campbell’s frozen Cream of Shrimp soup was purchased to be used as an extra cooling unit.

    That can of frozen soup concentrate has survived moves, divorce, blackouts, remarriage and more moves, and is still nestled in my mother’s freezer compartment of the extra fridge (a Kelvinator) in her basement.

  33. 33.

    schrodinger's cat

    Fat, sugar, spices and acidic mediums act as preservatives, so if the food product has either or all of the above or any combination thereof, it will keep it from spoiling. As for milk, or anything else I use my nose and eyes as the guide rather than the sell by date.

  34. 34.

    Botsplainer

    In the wingnut corner of Southwest Ohio, north of Big Butter Jesus, saw sheriff’s fleet of PT Cruisers.

    Very disturbing.

    This trip mandated by another asshole decision by 19 year old thoughtless narcissist hellspawn daughter, because she is completely fucking up her younger sister’s move in day at UC.

  36. 36.

    NotMax

    @geth

    That’s how you wind up with ten boxes of cinnamon teddy grahams in your pantry, damnit.Grind some up and use as a sprinkle topping for ice cream, frosted cakes, etc.

  39. 39.

    beltane

    @schrodinger’s cat: Fats can go rancid quickly. Anything with nuts will go rancid extremely quickly. My nose is sensitive to the odor of even slightly rancid fats so things that could pass muster with my husband are completely inedible to me.

  41. 41.

    MomSense

    @Amir Khalid:

    He was riffing on his loathing of ObamaCare when he made the statement that “Obama hates white people”. Two Republicans in attendance confirmed the comment to the newspapers and then all the big wigs in attendance started making carefully worded denials about not hearing the remark.

  43. 43.

    cmorenc

    Fish is a *very* bad thing to have in a freezer should power go out long enough for it to thaw and spoil. Years ago, we had a family beach house out on Ocean Isle Beach, NC, and my late father kept a small fishing boat he’d take two or three miles out into the Ocean to catch King Mackeral, and he’d sometimes freeze his catch in the freezer compartment at the beach house. Well, it was mid-July and it had been a couple of weeks since we (or to our knowledge anyone) had been down there when my dad took me and my uncle visiting from California down there. WOWEEE-EW as soon as we opened the door and walked in, the whole house smelled like a whoe football team had shit diarrhea all over the place after eating beans and tacos. Well, nothing in the toilets, floors, walls etc…it wasn’t until we opened the refrigerator and freezer and the odor of unbelievably pungent putrid rot wafted out..and realized it was coming from the couple of three-pound fish wrapped in tinfoil. Although the fish was at that moment hard-frozen, we realized what had likely happened was that the power had gone out on the island at some point for several hours (probably at least overnight at some point) after a bad electrical storm had knocked out some transformers, long enough to allow the fish to thaw, badly spoil in the July heat, and then re-freeze once the power was back on.

    NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES WE SCRUBBED AND WASHED THE FRIDGE OUT WITH LYSOL, a faint, but unpalatable residue of rotten fish odor was impossible to expunge from the fridge, and so the next morning, we had to buy a new fridge for the house. THE UPSIDE: we put the old fridge out on the well-ventilated back screened porch, where it became a magnificent beer fridge.

  44. 44.

    NotMax

    @schrodinger’s cat

    Dunno, but there’s almost certainly a Wikipedia page. The one I mentioned is ancient – white with gold accents on the outside, aqua on the inside, latch handles on fridge and freezer.

  46. 46.

    keestadoll

    Focusing on the issue of freezer meat for a moment…

    Lots of things to consider: if your meat was bought from a grocery store with the standard shrink-wrap, no more than 3 months in a standard freezer assuming you just throw it in as-is. If you remove the meat from the grocery store packaging and repackage it using one of those machines that sucks all the air out of the wrap and seals it air tight, maybe six months. A whole other universe is the meat that has been cut and butcher-wrapped. My family bought a cow last year from a local ranch and had this done. That meat can be stored for up to a year. Finally, the quality and consistency (of temperature) of your freezer is key. It’s important to keep a thermometer in the freezer and check it to make sure that it’s staying at or below zero.

  47. 47.

    Keith P.

    Frozen ham can’t really spoil, can it? I can see it getting freezer burn, but it wouldn’t develop salmonella or anything I assume.

  49. 49.

    NotMax

    @Not Max

    Boy, messed up that puppy.

    Corrected:

    beth

    That’s how you wind up with ten boxes of cinnamon teddy grahams in your pantry, damnit.

    Grind some up and use as a sprinkle topping for ice cream, frosted cakes, etc.

  50. 50.

    beltane

    @rikyrah: This would make sense since Republicans, being whiter and wealthier than the general population, would be insured at higher rates and thus be in a position to keep their children on their plans once this became an option.

  51. 51.

    Gin & Tonic

    I had a chest-type freezer in the basement that we went to fairly infrequently. Mice ate through some of the wiring and it stopped freezing. I discovered this a couple of weeks later. I also found out then that cleaning that putrid mess was man’s work. I only threw up twice during the process, which I figured was pretty good.

  53. 53.

    donnah

    My parents were Depression-era kids, so they kept everything. My mom is still living and my dad passed away on New Year’s Eve. He was a discount shopper and would buy stuff at Big Lots in big containers that they couldn’t have used in a hundred years.

    After he died, we kids did a cabinet clean-out. There were spices from 1995, all the smell and flavor was long gone. We found his collection of mini syrup bottles from Cracker Barrel and so many old, old packaged foods that some of the stores where they were purchased had long gone out of business.

    Remember Snack Pack canned fruit? We found a little can of peaches THAT RATTLED. It took five big garbage bags and freed up two entire shelves, but we got the cabinets back into a healthy, updated state.

  55. 55.

    beth

    @NotMax: Actually, I made some graham cracker crusts in disposable pie pans which I then put in the freezer which stayed there for a year before I threw out the unused ones. I’ve stopped bulk buying – it never works out for me.

  57. 57.

    shelly

    I had a neighbor who’d always store the free turkey she got from Shop-Rite in our downstairs freezer. She really didn’t cook, but hey!, it’s free. After one year when it had sat there for nearly 15 months, i offered to cook all future turkeys, complete with stuffing and mashed potatoes. So every year we had two Thanksgivings.

  58. 58.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Botsplainer: How is it that a 19 year old is dictating the family decisions?

    I guess my perspective is warped because everyone I hang around these days would say “So you think you’re grown? Be grown! Rent your own transportation. By the way, good luck with that.”

  59. 59.

    Amir Khalid

    @MomSense:
    Like the story points out, if there’s recorded audio then LePage has screwed himself twice. And if anyone is quietly holding on to that audio, they’re likely no friend of LePage.

  61. 61.

    Another Holocene Human

    @beth: Make the kid rake leaves or something to “earn” the treat. That will change the attitude quick.

    Bazooka Joe is terrible but I still valued what was so dearly bought. (Although, Topps is even more terrible … even I wouldn’t try to chew that stuff.)

    I shouldn’t be nagging after others’ parenting, as if I know anything (well I do know something, but that’s neither here nor there) but a parent slaving after a child’s whims kind of disturbs me … this is how obnoxious entitled fratdouches are made, after all. They don’t get that sense of entitlement from nowhere.

  62. 62.

    NotMax

    @schrodinger’s cat

    My grandmother’s fridge was cream colored on both inside and the outside.So was my 108-year-old* grandmother.

    *That’s all she would admit to, so everyone went along with the charade. She was 108 for about 4 years.

  66. 66.

    shelly

    “That’s how you wind up with ten boxes of cinnamon teddy grahams in your pantry, damnit.”
    ****************
    I remember us kids bugging our mother to buy Luck Charms. And then horrified when we actually tasted it.

  67. 67.

    beltane

    @donnah: This sounds like my mother’s kitchen. I only wish I had siblings to help clean out the mess when the time comes.

  69. 69.

    Shakezula

    When it is so covered in frost I can’t ID it, out it goes. Eventually. Once I notice it. The occasional blackout that lasts more than 24 hours also spurs random cleanings. We recently got a very tiny freezer chest but mainly it holds ice packs for when we go camping and food we buy and freeze prior to camping. Perhaps one day I’ll go full metal Mother in Law and use it to store casseroles and what not.

    On a slightly tangential topic, our crazy volunteer pumpkin plant has produced five healthy pumpkins (that we can see, there may be more lurking in the massive thing). They’re all on their way to total orangeness. Is there anything I can do to help them keep until Halloween? If not, any recipes for using ridiculous amounts of pumpkin?

  70. 70.

    MomSense

    @Another Holocene Human:

    It isn’t just a problem for LePage. There were a lot of Republican legislators, donors, the Chair of the Party, etc in that room. I’ll be curious to find out if Kevin Raye was there since he is the likely nominee for the 2nd Congressional District nomination for US House. A bunch of the Ron Paul contingent (the Ronulans) left the party earlier this week and they have been through several party chairs and co chairs recently so things are not well in Republicanland right now.

  73. 73.

    NotMax

    @schrodinger’s cat

    Oh, that she was. And iron-willed and stubborn.

    First, and as far as I know, also the only female to attend and go all the way through high school in the little village where she grew up in what was then Poland.

    That just wasn’t done there at that time.

  75. 75.

    Botsplainer

    @Another Holocene Human:

    Long story, but this kid is determined to make every lousy decision possible. Not picking her up would lead to worse consequences, because she became a very dedicated fuckups.

  76. 76.

    shelly

    Is there anything I can do to help them keep until Halloween? If

    They’ll keep just fine on their own. When they seem fully ripe and have a ‘hollow’ sound when you gently rap on them, cut them from the vine and store in a cool dry spot. I know, it’s surprising the first time you grow pumpkins. You think of them as an autumn veg, but they do really ripen around August.

  77. 77.

    BD of MN

    The 24th is my wife’s XXth class reunion, so I shall not be there, although the meetup is probably going to be more entertaining than the reunion…

  78. 78.

    The Moar You Know

    Way too late to the party with this:

    Steve, Don’t Eat It!

    In favor of eating the ham:

    It’s been frozen.
    Ham’s designed to sit and be a long-term storage food. I’d eat a 20-year old properly cured room-temperature ham.

    Not in favor:

    If it’s in the freezer it’s probably not cured.
    Power outages.
    Ham is old enough to vote.

    Only if I were starving.

  79. 79.

    kindness

    re: old foods. In our household that is rarely an issue as when something gets too old for me to consider eating it becomes the dogs delicacies for which they are always thankful for. I don’t freeze much so usually the freezer isn’t an issue.

  80. 80.

    PurpleGirl

    My fridge is medium sized but I don’t either freeze a lot or keep a lot in the cold box portion. My kitchen is a small galley room with little work space. I tend to eat simple things and buy meat only in the amount I will eat in two or three days. I don’t buy large packages of anything because it will go bad before I finish it. I buy half-n-half because that lasts longer than milk does. Even buying smaller amounts saves me money because I don’t waste and through out a lot. It took a few years to really learn this.

  81. 81.

    Shakezula

    @shelly: Many thanks. My previous experience with them were in stores, several attempts to coddle ones in the backyard (got pumpkins one year but they rotted pretty quickly) and in the fields of pick your own patches in mid-October.

    I always thought the vines on the field ones had died very recently. Clearly I was wrong. As for a cool dry place, these SOBs will sit in the living room if that’s what it takes to get some home grown jack o’ lanterns.

  82. 82.

    Gex

    Noooooooooooooooooo!

    I am out of town this weekend. Damn it all to hell. No MN meet-up for me.

    You guys have a great time though. I demand pics!

  83. 83.

    Aaron

    most regular grade consumer fridge freezer combos cool the freezer and then pipe the cold air into the fridge to keep that cold too. When it has a frost free setting the freezer turns off for a period to allow the ice to melt. when that happens bacteria can grow until the freezer restarts. over numerous cycles, harmful growth can be appreciable.
    However on a deep freezer like she had, there is likely no interruption of the freezing temperature. as a result food can be left in there indefinitely and the only warming is food near the top when the lid is occasionally opened. and since the ham was in a sealed package, it retains the moisture that keeps it edible. so yes, it was safe to eat.
    For safety, limit storage to 6 months tops on your regular freezer.

  87. 87.

    Mnemosyne

    I use Still Tasty to help me figure out what needs to be tossed from the fridge.

    According to the gubbmint, anything kept at 0 degrees in the freezer will be safe to eat pretty much forever, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to taste good.

  88. 88.

    Barney

    I have a half-used jar of peanut butter at the back of the cupboard with a Use By date of Feb 2000. By now, I look on it as a biological experiment rather than potential food. It looks OK from the outside, but I haven’t dared open it for many years now. When I do, I’ll do it outside, just in case, because I’m thinking of this:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lTTmJ3xqEo

    I also have an opened jar of mint jelly (an accompaniment for lamb, if Americans don’t use it) in the fridge that has a Use By date of June 2011. Again, it looks OK from the outside. There’s a danger I’ll be tempted to use this at some time.

  89. 89.

    beltane

    @Barney: The jelly should be fine. The peanut butter should be chucked immediately. Aside from stinking to high heaven, rancid peanut oil is supposedly toxic.

  90. 90.

    Stella B.

    @Shakezula: oh yes, please. I have a mound of pumpkins on my back porch and no room in my freezer for roasted pumpkin flesh. For eating purposes, though, they do need to be stored for a while. Unlike sweet corn, the starches turn to sugar in storage … If the mice don’t get them. Also, don’t forget that you can pour pumpkin pie filling into ramekins and cook them in a water bath for an easier and healthier dessert.

  91. 91.

    gogol's wife

    I’ve been reading “The Murderer’s Companion,” a book published in 1941 that rehashes famous murder cases of the Victorian era. It’s really chilling to read the original accounts of what happened. It mostly involves antimony being sneaked into people’s food, and then they vomit every day for five years until they die. So although I’m normally not too squeamish, this morning I threw away a whole container of rice milk because it was missing the usual plastic covering on the foil spout. Until I finish this book, I’m throwing out everything that looks at me sideways.

  93. 93.

    Roger Moore

    @Glocksman:

    So that’s why the ice cubes keep shrinking.

    Nope, that’s sublimation, which is also what causes freezer burn. A tiny bit of the ice will go straight from solid to gas and then either frost out on something slightly cooler (like the freezer coils in a manual defrost freezer) or get shunted down into the refrigerator portion. This is the same way freeze drying works, except that when freeze drying stuff you deliberately pull the water vapor away from the stuff you’re trying to dry rather than having it happen incidentally.

  94. 94.

    moderateindy

    That lady had nothing on my mother. After she passed a few years ago (2010), I cleaned out the deep freezer (bought in 1960’s) and at the bottom lodged in ice, were items from the long defunct Phar-Mor, and a couple of things so old that they did not have bar codes.
    In the cabinets were bottles of karo syrup from the eighties, but best of all was in the liquor cabinet, a package of dry ingredients for making Harvey Wallbangers, and I am not kidding, on the package it said something to the effect of “try the new drink sweeping the nation”. Obviously the parents were not big drinkers, and I don’t know what was in a Harvey Wallbanger, but how could you make it by adding dry ingredients to liquor?

  95. 95.

    Katrina

    Every few months. It’s fun to have a “buy nothing” week and force yourself to eat through all the stuff in your freezer. It becomes a challenge — how can we get rid of three bags of frozen peas in an appetizing way? (Answer: cook in hot water, drain, mix with onions sautéed in butter, and purée for a delicious soup).Towards the end of that week you might see us eating some strange things, like soup for breakfast, but I get some satisfaction out of using it all up, and the only way to force the issue is to refuse to buy other food until its mostly gone.

  96. 96.

    Gravenstone

    When my stepfather’s father passed away, we relocated his widow to an apartment then set about cleaning out their house. During that process, we found three, *THREE* chest freezers filled to the brim with cleaned and fileted bluegill. The couple had been retired multiple years by the time he passed, and had a summer cottage on a local lake, so fishing was a constant for them. But seriously, keeping enough fish to fill three 16-18 cubic foot freezers???

  97. 97.

    Gretchen

    @[email protected]aimai: we have this worm composter:http://www.amazon.com/Worm-Factory-DS3GT-3-Tray-Composter/dp/B000S6LZBO/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1377105795&sr=8-3&keywords=worm+farms
    It takes up very little space and consumes our vegetable waste, resulting in worm compost for the garden.
    As for freezers, we have a big chest freezer that we bought when we had 4 kids at home because they are supposedly energy-efficient. They may be energy-efficient, but they’re not food-efficient, because stuff gets buried at the bottom for years. We had planned to buy a smaller upright with shelves at Christmas, so we could see everything that’s in it and use it before it’s a decade old. Now that we only have one kid at home, who works in a restaurant and eats most of his meals there, we don’t need as much. But we kept needing car repairs, plumbing repairs, vet bills and so on since Christmas, so still have the big stupid chest freezer with who-knows-what in the bottom.

  98. 98.

    Original Lee

    I almost exclusively use Hefty freezer bags (double bag the meat) and write the date on the outside. About once a month I “shop the freezer” for 2-3 meals. Old & freezer-burned vegetables get used for vegetable stock, old bread gets used for either croutons or bread pudding. I use old fruit for jams. I throw out old raw meat, but old cooked meat gets put in stew or stock (depending). I throw out obviously spoiled items. I only keep certain items in the upstairs refrigerator freezer. The rest is in the downstairs upright freezer.

    I keep track of it all with a whiteboard on the side of the fridge – it’s a mini one-year calendar, and every time I put something in, I write it on the calendar with the year, and every time I take something out, I erase it. That way I can see that I have to start using up the stuff from January or May.

    We also buy a lamb once a year from a place that vacuum-packs the cuts, and I try to put lamb on the dinner menu at least once every two weeks. Last year we went a little crazy and bought extra ground lamb, so now I’m trying to schedule enough meals of lamb so that we’re almost done when it’s time to pick up the next year’s lamb in January.

  99. 99.

    Gretchen

    @beth: I can totally relate. But eventually they grow up and stock up on their own 10 boxes of Teddy Grahams, leaving mine clear.

  100. 100.

    Gretchen

    @Botsplainer: We did that last year! And hellspawn who ruined sister’s move-in and birthday later complains that sister isn’t as interested in being close as she might be. Sibling rivalry is awesome.

  101. 101.

    Gretchen

    @Botsplainer: We did that last year! And hellspawn who ruined sister’s move-in and birthday later complains that sister isn’t as interested in being close as she might be. Sibling rivalry is awesome.

  102. 102.

    Gretchen

    @Gretchen: @Botsplainer:
    Hey, I’ve got that kid too! Different kid from the hellspawn, who always makes good decisions if they affect her. This one always makes bad decisions and is always surprised that they turned out badly, again. I’ve got a friend who has one perfect child, despite being something of a fuckup herself, who is always offering advice. She thinks I should get him declared disabled and put him in a group home,because “consequences”. Really. Because her child turned out perfect because of her perfect parenting.

  103. 103.

    gbear

    MN Meetup: Given those three choices of venue, I’ll vote for Shamrocks. Great burgers and it’s in my neighborhood where parking is free, although it can be a little hard to find at that intersection (West 7th at Randolph and Osceola). Sounds like more people are saying they can’t make that weekend than are saying they can. Would we be better off picking a day after labor day weekend?

  104. 104.

    Seanly

    Quick background – my grandmother was a very young girl of a poor family BEFORE the Depression. This made her a cheapskate foodhoarder. When family was cleaning out her house in the early 2000’s they were finding cans of soup & other items from the 50’s & 60’s in the basement storage.

    She was so cheap that it ended up wasting money. My mom & late grandfather hated the taste of magarine, but my grandmother would keep buying it because it was less expensive. They’d complain & then she’d still have to buy the butter.

  107. 107.

    Jay C

    @beltane: @Amir Khalid: @raven:

    Late, but:…

    Not to worry, the ancient oil got tossed, and since then, I’ve never gotten more olive oil than I think I’ll be likely to use in a couple of months.

    (and thanks for your concern!)

  108. 108.

    MomSense

    @Seanly:

    My grandmother’s best friend was one of four sisters and when we cleaned out their house after they died, we found a locked storage room in the basement. The shelves were full of sugar, flour, canned goods, and pantyhose from the 40s and 50s. I opened one of the packages of nylons and they disintegrated in my hands. My grandmother just shook her head and said “bless their hearts they were stocking up for another war”.

  109. 109.

    Gus

    @beth: You just have to be selective about it. My first couple trips to Costco were disastrous. Lots of money spent on food I never wound up using. Now we just buy a few select things, mostly non-perishable.

  110. 110.

    Schlemizel

    Disappointed cuz I know there are more Gophers here than have responded. My choice would be Bulldog because I like it and have no idea about Shamrock but Shamrock would be fun because its new & on the word of a fellow BJ’er. 3 or 4 works for me & the woman stupid enough to marry me.

  113. 113.

    Ivy

    @aimai: You need a worm bin. Very clean, very effective. They need to be kept above freezing, so no parking it outside during freezing winters.

  114. 114.

    Jill

    Erma Bombeck and my mother agreed on leftovers- you can only throw them out without guilt when they’ve decayed enough to be unrecognizable. When I was 18, I found in our freezer a package of meat that was three years older than me. And we had moved in that span of 21 years.

  116. 116.

    tom jackson

    how about keys at the foshay for the meet up?. great food, good prices, centrally located and i know the bartender! (fulton sweet child of vine,summit epa, minnesota state bitter, lucid air, big wood’s morning wood on tap)

  118. 118.

    gravie

    So for keeping the freezer under control, I recommend a big cross-country move. You can’t take any of your freezer goodies with you, and you’ll be shopping frugally for awhile until you recover from the cost of moving and setting up housekeeping in a new location. Of course, that’s no guarantee that the old habits won’t creep back in…

  119. 119.

    Barney

    @beltane:

    The next day, I saw some lamb burgers on special offer at the supermarket, so I took the plunge, and opened the mint jelly jar. It smells fine, a small taste seemed fine, so I went ahead and had a normal helping, over 24 hours ago now, and no ill effects.

    Thanks for the peanut butter advice – I was pretty sure I’d never even try a tiny taste since it’s so old, but if there’s a chance of toxicity, I’ll definitely skip it.

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