I found quite a few things I'd like to go on and use. It's going to be long list for me to work my way through.
Initially I was pretty stoked. I didn't discover but one can from 2019 and everything else I pulled off the shelves was near expiration in a month or two, but then I found a plethora of things that expired in the autumn of 2020. Mind you, nothing I'm terribly concerned over. Most of it is canned goods or dried fruit, things that will hold regardless of 'best buy', but I do know that the longer I delay using them the less the quality of what is inside the can/bag.
My list below does not include the things expiring in the next two to three months. These are only the items that are expired, or which I've had on hand for a LONG time even though there they do not have a best buy date.
A bin of things to use up:
3 cans chicken noodle soup 2019
2 cans chicken breast meat 4/20 and 9/20
1 can fruit cocktail 12/20
1 can pineapple slices 6/20
2 1lb boxes of spaghetti 5/20
1 box of powdered milk packets 8/20 and I'm pretty sure I have two single packets in the cupboard with the same date on them.
Dried cherries 12/19
dried blueberries 1/20
2 4# sugar 9/20
1 jar Lemon curd 6/20
1 packet Sure-jel 1/20
1 Balsamic glaze spray bottle (NO clue how long I've had this but pretty sure I've been counting it into my inventory for the past 3 years
1 orange gelatin 3/20
I placed these items at the end of a shelf:
7 cans peaches expired 9/2020
2 cans Canellini beans 10/2020
What I found in the kitchen cupboard:
1 can table cream 5/19
1 angel food cake mix 10/20
1 box butterscotch pudding 2019
1 box strawberry gelatin 3/20
And what I'd already carted out to my pantry before I discovered how very much I was going to need to focus on using:
1 can of tomatoes exp. 2019
2 cans tomato paste 12/20
2 boxes of Vanilla wafers Nov 2020
1 box of Graham crackers (minus one sleeve I'd used at Christmas time) 12/2020
1 bag of Oyster crackers 11/20
Better Than Bouillion Chicken flavor 2020
1 box lemon gelatin 2020
So there you have it, my Gathered Fragments list of things to use up in the next few weeks. I've already used a can of peaches for tonight's salad, instead of the Pears I'd planned to use. I've swapped older things for newer ones in the kitchen and put the newer ones back into the pantry. No point in using up what isn't expired until I use what is, right?
6 comments:
Hi Terri - This is very inspiring! I need to go through my pantries and check dates. Can't wait to hear how you use these items in your meal plans. Thank you for your wonderful blog! Blessings, Shirley
Please share how you end up using these. I enjoy challenges like this. You have a lot of interesting and tasty things to get through.
I shouldn't have much expired in my pantry because I mostly just started it during the pandemic. But, just because of your blog today I'm going to go through it all.
I would be careful of expired cake mix. There was a tragic incident for some teenagers with expired pancake mix (similar to cake mix). Admittedly, that mix was much further out-of-date than your cake mix.
Just my opinion.
Mrs. Miller you now have me interested in what could happen with expired pancake mix except having bugs that you could see.
Cheryl, I was curious too so I went and looked. There have been a few such incidences in which someone with a mold allergy ate long expired mixes and went into anaphylactic shock.
There are various stories circulating and it doesn't appear to be a terribly common thing. One theory is that yeast in products develop spores that can mutate into something poisonous. That was unfounded according to all I've found about that.
The other thing was that molds might form. If a box or package is open and has been expired for years, molds may grow and be present. Among those molds were penicillin, bacillius and other such spores. Food that is contained in closed packaging shouldn't come into contact with these spores at all and for most of us, they wouldn't be deadly but for a few, it could be.
My cake mix is only expired by one month. It's still in original, unopened packaging and hasn't been exposed to damp or mold. I'd toss if it had been.
For the most part, if the packaging is unopened it might be good for a year or more beyond expiration date (a lot of things will keep well beyond the expiration dates listed on products these days). The more usual problem with baking mixes is that they might not rise as well as they would when they were fresher.
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