When the boys were small, I used to shop at a supermarket where you collected a felt tip pen on the way in and wrote the prices on items as you took them from the shelf. This was obviously in the pre-scanning days. Anyway, I found a can of fish in the pantry with the price written in my own fair hand.
That supermarket has been closed for at least a decade so I decided it was time to pension off the fish!
I also found the odd packs of soups, sauce ingredients and oriental seasonings that had passed their use by dates.
I also took the opportunity to check over all the herbs and spices. These can lose their flavour and oomph if they are stored too long, even if they are kept in dark glass jars. Flavoured salts like onion salt, celery salt, fries seasoning and similar are hygroscopic or "water seeking" because of the salt content. If they are left around for too long, they become damp and form a sticky lump. You've probably seen this happen with stock powder.
Sometimes when I am doing the shopping, I can't remember if I still have supplies of certain ingredients for a recipe I am planning to make. And, as a food writer, I often receive product samples. There seemed to be quite a bit of duplication - two large bottles of fish sauce, four or five chilli sauce varieties, assorted Asian ingredients.
The carton I put aside for son Ben's flat soon started filling up with cans, packets and jars. He was delighted with his windfall as he enjoys dabbling in the kitchen.
When he moved out some weeks back I gave him a wine rack and some of the red wine we had accumulated over several years. We rarely drink red wine so he was very gracious about relieving us of the surplus. It seems some of it has aged very nicely judging from his reports on this or that dinner party and the very nice bottle of 1989 something he's taken along.
