Vocal Voices

So I get back from Asda after a successful shopping trip. I tell Mrs O that I have got everything but the thing. What thing, she asks. The thing, says the Ostrich. It’s what you wrote down on the list. "A small cleaning thing". There are many things in Asda, including small things and cleaning things, but I don’t know what a small cleaning thing is. I am only a man, after all. I need a picture ….

Don’t worry about that, she says. Master O, (who is off work sick), wants a chicken soup for lunch. Have we got one? Of course, I beam, and head for the garage, wherein resides the Mother of all piles of canned soups, stockpiled against the coming of the Apocalypse. Campbell’s, Heinz, Crosse & Blackwell, Baxters, take your pick. French onion, vegetable, beef broth, pea & 'am, potato and leek, you name it. I wade in and start dismantling the mountain. I finally get to the bottom. No chicken. And by now, there are rows and rows of cans of soup on every conceivable shelf and surface in the garage.

I go back into the house. Unfortunately there isn’t one, I says. If he’d made his mind up earlier, I could have got one when I went out. Don’t worry, she says, I haven’t looked in the kitchen cupboard yet. I look. And there - is one solitary can of blinkin' chicken soup!

You realise I now have to go back to the garage and rebuild the Pyramid of Gaza, don’t you, says I. Don’t worry, says she, serenely, there will be no cans of soup in Heaven .....

Oh yes there will, says I. That’s where I keep the overflow from the garage …..

You could always take a flask of soup to the footy.

We don't exactly stockpile cans of soup, but I do stockpile most other things. At least I make sure there are spares of most of our everyday basic items. I keep them all in hubby's wardrobe! Where else would I keep them.

It's handy when there is a really good offer on. I buy a trolleyfull of whatever it is and shove it in the cupboard. Sometimes though I do tend to forget what is in there and buy more.

Rodo wrote: Sometimes though I do tend to forget what is in there and buy more.

I do that too

But I have jars of curry sauce and tins of baked beans and jars of coffee, under the stairs

No chicken soup though

Hope Master O feels better soon Ossie x

Now I know why there is no chicken soup in Aldi when I go

The things I buy regularly - tins of tomatoes, passata and tomato purée - are never on offer so it is pointless to stockpile.

Ossie, what's the expiry date of the tins? How long does tinned food actually last - is the expiry date something to worry about?

I've got a few tins right in the back of a small cupboard that I forget I've got and just buy more of when I go to the shops and those ones at the back are old.... very very old

meriad wrote:Ossie, what's the expiry date of the tins? How long does tinned food actually last - is the expiry date something to worry about?

Funny you should ask that.

A few weeks ago I was watching a programme asking a similar thing. A chef visited a woman's house where she had things way out of date... spices going back to 1983! He claimed that the nose test was pretty infallible and that tins which were not damaged or showing signs of corrosion should be fine. They actually made and ate a whole meal from way out of date foods.

As an aside: In the forces (1970s to 80s) we used to get field rations dated back to the early 1950s. There were tins of fruit cocktail, soup, stewed steak, corned beef, Frey Bentos pies, mixed veg. A lot of it tasted miles better than today's equivalent products.

It tends to be loo roll and kitchen roll Mick stockpiles in our garage!

I don't know if he is anticipating a typhoid epidemic, or if it's a comment on my cooking.........................

I'm not going to swear everything's in date, Meriad, but the pile is recycled - brought in from garage, used, and replaced by newer stock - on a regular basis ...

And no, I am not going out to the garage at this point in time to check all the dates either. It's raining ...