Good food?

Last week I woke up with a craving for chicken noodle soup, probably because of its supposed curing powers, seeing as I hadn’t felt well for a couple days.

Apparently, I haven’t actually purchased chicken soup (noodle or otherwise) in quite a while. I say that because the date on top on the can I found in my cabinet was Dec 2003.



As far as I know, the only date they stamp on top of cans of soup is the expiration date. This left me with a bit of a dilemma on my hands because, as I mentioned earlier, I didn’t feel good and didn’t want to leave the house.

That was when the justification process began.

First off, I searched the can for a message that would dilute the importance of the actual “expiration date.” Something like “best if used by,” or “freshest before,” either of which would allow a little wiggle room in the whole food-safety continuum—at least in my book. Hmm, no such luck.

Then I tried to delude myself into thinking that 2003 wasn’t really all THAT long ago, and reassure myself that foods don’t actually degrade into toxic mush on their “expiration date” anyway. I also noted the fact that December is late in the year, so in reality the expiration date was almost 2004. Then again 2004 was three years ago...

Did I mention I was very hungry?

I went back and forth with this whole thing, and even tried to think of someone I could call to ask if I should eat the soup. Of course, the soup in question had most likely been produced when the OTHER George Bush was president. And when I thought about it like that, I figured that anyone I called would tell me NOT to eat it. Clearly, that would be the reasonable thing to do in the situation...

At this point It should be noted that I was really, very hungry.

I went ahead and opened the can. It looked normal enough—although since I’m apparently not much of a condensed soup consumer, I might not have been the best judge of what “normal” canned soup is supposed to look like. I even heated the soup up, but I chickened out (ha!) at the last minute and didn’t actually eat it.

Instead, I threw it out in the yard for the squirrels. Wait a minute...you don’t think there could be a connection, do you?


;-)