S/O......what is the OLDEST food in your fridge/freezer?

[Ottakee]

As a spin off from the food tossing rules......what is oldest thing in your fridge or freezer?

I helped my mom clean her fridge and I think we will win but let me see what you can come up with.

[Daria]

I don't have any feet in my refrigerator.  (Sorry, I couldn't resist)

The oldest in mine would be condiments, but they still aren't very old.  I probably have salad dressing that's a month or two old.

[Guest]

I don’t have any feet in my freezer; closest thing might be some beef shank bones, lol! 

But without looking, I would guess the oldest thing in my freezer are beef livers from 2014. I don’t eat them and don’t want them, but they came with our portion of a steer and there they languish. I gave some away but giving meat away is logistically difficult. 

Close second would be to pre-made gluten-free pie crusts. I bought them to make pie my sister could eat at Thanksgiving, but then thought better of it because I doubt it tastes good and I didn’t want us all to eat soggy fake dough. So it remains. I could give them to my sister, but again there’s that logistical issue where it is hard to give frozen food to someone else. 

I empty my fridge regularly. The oldest thing in there is yeast. 

[Kassia]

I just tossed a bag of frozen peas today that we used as an ice pack for many many years.  I have no idea how old they were but my guess is 13-14 years.  

[itsheresomewhere]

I can win this one-  we have a few pigs feet in our freezer ( old dog who has food issues and only eats these when he goes on a food strike).  They are a year and a half old. 

Otherwise, everything is a year or less.  We did a big clean out last year of the freezer.  The fridge gets cleaned out or used up regularly. 

[Liz CA]

I am too afraid to look...well in the freezer, I know I have homemade tomato sauce from tomatoes harvested years ago...

[Ottakee]

In the fridge my mom had butter, the real stick butter, that expired in 2014.  I suggested she buy new butter.

For the freezer, when we cleaned one she offered me some apple turn overs....that expired in 1998.

The tops though was butter in the freezer that expired in 1994.......I said it had to go and she said, " that isn't that old" until I pointed out that it was 24 years .....older than my daughters who were helping me.

 

Needless to say, I tossed it all.

In her defense, she is in a power wheelchair full time and couldn't see it empty this stuff out.

[J-rap]

The oldest food I have now is Trader Joe's sweet potatoes fries.  I've had them for about a year and a half.

But, my mother had something much older.  She actually kept the top of our wedding cake in her freezer for 25 years!  On our 25th anniversary, she took it out, thawed it, and we all had a bite.  (So our kids can all say that they tasted their parents' wedding cake. :))

[Mom22ns]

I have some fish in my freezer that my dad caught. He died 7 years ago, so they are at least 8 years old.

[Annie G]

The oldest thing in my freezer is blueberries from my sister’s bushes. Two summers old. 

‘I recently cleaned out my inlaws’  chest freezer and tossed steaks and other quality cuts of beef. Well, they were quality when they obtained them back when they split a cow with dh’s uncle. Uncle passed away in 1997 so they were probably a few years older than that. 

[AmandaVT]

Every year, I save leftover Christmas cookies in the freezer, thinking it'll be great to eat them in a month or so. Every year, I forget about them until about now (this thread reminded me) and I end up throwing them out. 

In the fridge, I'm pretty sure it's a jar of chili garlic sauce. It lasts a long time because DH is the only one that enjoys more than a tiny bit of it in his food. If not that, then one of the condiments. Within the past 6 months. 

[TrixieB]

A can of Whoop Ass soda that dh bought sometime during the summer of 2000.

ETA: he bought it as a joke when his brother came to visit.  They never got around to drinking it and it has been on the same shelf of our fridge ever since.

 

[Wheres Toto]

Nothing too old in the fridge/freezer because we lost power earlier this year and moved everything to my mothers house.  We threw out anything too old/not worth moving.  The oldest thing right now is probably the bag of mice to feed our snake.  They are about a year old I would say.  She went a few months without eating due to breeding season so we didn't go through them as fast as we thought we would.

The pantry on the other hand.... I'm pretty sure we have stuff in their that's around 10 years old.  Cake decorating stuff, jars of sauces or condiments that we are never going to use (I don't know why we just don't get rid of them), cooking sherry that actually must be over 14 years old because it was here when I married dh.  I'm sure there are other things on the back of the top shelf that have been here longer than I have.

[moonflower]

frozen broccoli, 1 week.

[Kassia]

6 hours ago, AmandaVT said:

Every year, I save leftover Christmas cookies in the freezer, thinking it'll be great to eat them in a month or so. Every year, I forget about them until about now (this thread reminded me) and I end up throwing them out. 

 

I wish I were one of those people who could "forget" I have cookies in the freezer!  Sweets call my name until they are gone!

[Carrie12345]

In the fridge, probably a steak sauce or mustard.  But I'll own up to 7 day old salmon! I forgot to tos it on trash day, and we have bears, so it's tightly wrapped for next trash day.

No idea in the freezer. I might have a ham bone from Christmas.

[lavender's green]

I just did a full review of the freezers a week or two ago. Everything is from Thanksgiving or later, mostly a lot later. I did have one or two a few freezer-to-slow cooker meals that I made when I was pregnant 3 years ago and tossed them. I definitely would have tasted the freezer burn on those.

In the fridge, most things are less than a month old. The exceptions are olives, pickles, jam, mustard. I use my aunt's trick and write the date I opened an item on it with permanent marker.

In the pantry I have a couple cans of pie filling that are several years old. I bought them for making those campfire sandwich thingies on a beach trip. The sandwich maker is gone and I don't know what to do with them now. I'm good at making pie and don't need those, and the labels are gone because the kids sometimes play in the pantry, so I don't know if I can donate them.

[marbel]

We have a jar of some kind of peppers that's been around a long time, several years.  My husband uses them on some sandwiches. It's almost empty so it'll be gone soon.

It's gone now but we had a small package of 'country ham' in there for about 4 years. My in-laws had sent it to him as a gift. It doesn't need refrigeration (I've seen the stuff in stores) and didn't have an expiration date on it. I know it's heavily salted so probably is safe for years. Anyway, I would remind him it was there but he'd always said he'd have it another time.  When our fridge was not working recently and I was throwing out other stuff, I took advantage of the opportunity to toss it.  

[Rachel]

I can say confidently nothing in our freezer is older than 5.5 years old, that’s when we moved into this house. 

I’m pretty good about only buying what I actually plan to use but we were given a side of beef and I’ve never used the soup bones. Those maybe 3-4 years old. I also know I have a bag of pine nuts I bought for a recipe then never touched again.

I threw away two year old hamburger buns yesterday. That one frustrated me, we were asked to take a meal to Ronald McDonald House and when we showed up someone else was already cooking. We froze the buns thinking we would take them the next month, but the next month the group we were cooking with wanted to serve something else. We were cooking for camp counselors yesterday, so I thawed the buns hoping they had survived, but they were terribly freezer burned. ☹️