Shelf Life

It being January and all, we here at the House of Phogles are working on a number of self-betterment, family-improvement projects. We have new responsibility tracking charts for the four oldest children, which they helped design. I'm making lists o' stuff to be tended to on the chalkboard in the kitchen, and am actually getting things crossed off now and again. The phoglets are back to their school work, and we're pursuing a more responsible schedule, and with modest success.

Now, keep in mind, this is January. We'll see our true colors in July, I'm sure.

One of the things we did was get out our 72-Hour kits and give them an overhaul for Family Home Evening last week. It was lots of chaos, and didn't go exactly as I had envisioned. We dumped out all the food - most of which was two years past its expiration date - and did an informal inventory on everything else.

Boy, it's a good thing we didn't have a disaster! We would have up creek sans paddle! Only Hyrum, Gabriella and Lucy had a decent kit, and none of us had viable clothing. Eliza, Yvette and George had absolutely nothing. Mark and I didn't have enough food...actually, I don't think any of us really had enough food for 72 hours. But we shall never know, shall we? When we first made up these kits (I actually did it for Christmas one year - 2004, I think - it was the "big gift" that year), we set the goal that we would go through them every six months - say, at General Conference time, or something - to update the clothing and the food. Hahahahahah! Let's see: it's three months from Christmas to General Conference, give or take. Yeah, it didn't take long to blow that goal off.

Here's the funny: we're sitting around the living room, with this huge pile of schtuff in the middle. And I'm having the children help me sort and count and stack what-have-you. And they can't help but notice the growing pile of fruit snacks and juice boxes and beef jerky. I don't know how it is where you live, but these things are highly sought after in our home - because this Mommy very rarely springs for them, and with good reason. It was just killing my chiddlers to think that we were going to just toss all of those goodies simply because they were old.

To assuage their concerns of wastefulness, I regaled them with a short lecture on salmonella, botulism, and e. coli; along with stories of food poisoning (remember Aunt Chelsea, who got food poisoning from a vending machine sandwich that one semester at college, and was so violently sick that she missed her final exam and had to take an incomplete in the class?). I showed them how to find the expiration dates (because they don't know, because nothing stays in our larder long enough) and explained what that meant. I pointed out that the entire collection was older than Yvette.

But still, they were keen to open a package or two and try them out, just to be sure. All my food service training (I took the state food handler's license course twice!) is screaming NO!, but I was willing to let them open something to witness the smell or the mildew or whatever unpleasant surprise awaited inside.

So, of course, they choose the fruit gummie snacks. Hyrum volunteered to be the guinea pig. He opened the pack. And. Nothing. There was nothing wrong with it. I watched as he sampled one. Again. Nothing. There was nothing wrong with it. I double-checked the date: July 2006. Uhm, that was two-and-a-half years ago. But OK. The children cheered, and Mark and I looked on in amused dismay as they consumed 72 hours worth of fruit gummie snacks as an ad hoc Family Home Evening treat.

Now, three things are going through my head:

1. I need to brace myself for the next 24 hours, because this could truly backfire
2. These kids need to get out more
3. What on EARTH do they put in that stuff that it's shelf stable for so long? Do I want to know, seriously?

Of course, spurred on by their success with the fruity snacks, they enthusiastically want to test more. Like the juice boxes! And the beef jerky! I'm wincing, and searching around for a viable argument as to why this is such a bad idea. Nothing comes to mind. So, I capitulate. First up for testing: juice boxes. All three varieties are fine. Down the hatch they go (you'd think I never feed my children. Au contraire. We had finished dinner not 30 minutes before FHE began...). Next up: beef jerky. Now, the beef jerky was still good, but it had lost some flavor. So, it actually lasted longer, like, half-way into Tuesday. But it was consumed, nonetheless. That following Sunday, my brother, Wilson, volunteered to test the canned single-serving peaches and mixed fruit. That was edible, too, apparently. "I mean, you can tell they're old, but they're still good," he said.

As it turns out, the only thing that went bad-all-the-way-bad was the Ocean Spray brand grapefruit juice. Wow. I have no response to that.

In the mean time, we'd better not have a disaster between now and February, because I have to wait until our next paycheck to redo the food and make a pack for the three youngest.

Pray for us.