I had a 93 year old grandmother’s funeral this last weekend and just for fun I’ll share a bit of what was in her food storage room. There weren’t too many things, especially edible ones. The room was in her basement and I’m not sure even how often she went down there the last few years. So, if your food storage looks like any of these, just throw it out!
First up is Pork and Beans. Harmless enough from the front.
But if the back looks like this, it’s not good anymore:
If your can is seeping out the bottom onto the shelf, it needs to go:
Random unlabeled home canned mystery liquid with way too much headspace (air at the top of the jar):
What looked like wheat flour in a non-insect-proof container so it is now infested with nasty little bugs:
And lastly, home canned something labeled only with the date 5-77. If you really have home canned products from the 1970’s, it’s past time for them to go.
Of course it’s best to use your food before it gets this old, but it’s also okay to get rid of old food. You don’t need to keep it hanging around the food room. If you’ve let it go past its expiration date, you can send it to the chickens, the neighbor’s chickens, or the trash and use that space for storing something edible.
And if you have an elderly friend or family member, ask if you can help them clean out their pantry or food storage room. They physically may not be up to the task and sometimes an outside observer can make better judgments on what needs to be cleaned out.
Thanks, Grandma, for the great visual aids. :)
Keep preparing! Angela
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Oh, my! This could have been my grandma’s food storage, right down to the handwriting. Thanks for sharing.
Neither of my grandmothers lived beyond their 60s, but out of respect and my own sadness I would not put their foibles and failures on the internet less than a week after either died. I would have saved the pictures and not put that it was my grandmother, identifying the person who was not quite capable of managing.
My neighbor canned until she was in her 90s. Every seal failed. She knew it, I think. She would not allow me to help her clean out her extra refrigerator. He daughter sneaked out things one at a time.
Nothing was moved, not even little hoards of things, until she died and was buried. By hoarding, I mean a dresser full of dozens of sweaters, unworn, given as gifts to her in her later years. Sweaters, nightgowns, and scarves were the gifts she received too many of. Having lived through the Depression as an adult raising children, I imagine she thought she or daughters or granddaughers or ggdaughters might need a sweater. She loved the Quincy gift certificates and used them!
Her pride in being a useful human being who was still competent was at stake even though food was rotting. I understood.
PP, I agree with your post. Your last paragraph was particularly poignant to me.
Also, I gleaned some tips about gifts for the elderly loved one; being careful about not giving the obvious things that everyone might have thought of. But a gift certificate to a favourite store–especially if they are mobile enough for you to take them out to spend it! Time with them might be the nicest gift (for yourself as well.) :)
Thanks for sharing your story.
This is a great post and helps us all identify with our own lives and the people in our lives and what to keep our eyes on as they age. Sounds like she was a wonderful woman with quite an old storage supply, but cute story none the less..thanks for sharing !
New reader and new subscriber here! I’m having fun reading through the posts.
I don’t know anyone who would knowingly keep foods like the examples you pictured…maybe unknowingly, like your grandma. But no doubt there are a few out there. I am not a terrible stickler for exact dates, partly because of this interesting article: http://grandpappy.info/hshelff.htm In case you don’t follow the link, it’s about several shelf life tests, one of which was conducted on 100-year old canned foods that were retrieved from the Steamboat Bertrand which found that the foods were as safe to eat as they had been when canned more than 100 years earlier.” The studies don’t refer to home-canned foods. Now off to read more posts! :)