Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Mary Jane Brownies

I have taken a vow of good eating recently. No more ice cream, candy, cookies, red meat, fried foods, Arbys, etc. I subsequently broke my vow as I always do, but I've still been pretty good. Tonight was a celebration of sorts, which is the reason to break any vow and although there was truthfully no good reason to celebrate we got a bit crazy anyway and dug out a box of brownie mix that has been sitting in the cupboard for a while.

MaLe whipped up a batch of brownies and after enduring the scent of baked goods cascading through the apartment, she offered a bite for me to try.

While the brownies cooled, she suggested that she was a bit worried about eating them since the expiration date on the package was May of 2004. I told her not to worry. It's just flavored flour and sugar and.... I trailed off hoping she would get bored thinking I was listing ingredients. She came back in a bit later and said she was really worried now which I thought was weird since she had only one bite. Apparently she had several "one bites" and had eaten nearly half of a 9 inch cake pan of brownies.

I have no idea if she'll be ok or not. I mean it's not hamburger that has been sitting around for 3 years. In fact it is part of a collection of my mother's (Mary Jane) pantry items that I brought down from Vermont. I couldn't bear to just throw them out and seeing as she had kept them well past the expiration date, I figured I would too. Her corn bread was fine and the honey mustard was a bit off, but the brownies tasted ok.

hmm.. in retrospect...she probably would have said "Jesus God don't eat that!" and then gone online to WebMD to research food expirations and food poisoning.

time for bed. feeling a little bit funny.

5 comments:

  1. I think that I have a few boxes of matza that are that old, but I don't think matza can go bad. I mean, really, how can it go bad - get stale? How would you know the difference?

    http://www.hormel.com/templates/knowledge/knowledge.asp?catitemid=7&id=587 lists a chart with life expectancy of different types of food. It says brownie can be kept around for about 1 year. However, you should "keep cool and dry" Considering you live in Florida and that they traveled from Vermont, I'd say the chances of that are slim.

    That site also has an excellent storage chart for refrigerated items (such as chicken) that our sister may want to check out.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anytime you think about breaking your 'good eating' vow pick up Jane Goodall's book, "Harvest for Hope" about what we eat and the environmental and health impacts...it's a great read and it usually gets me right back on track.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I believe Jane Goodall was accused of eating bushmeat a few times. Does this book detail her problems as a Chimpivore?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Today my coworkers became concerned when I ate some "All BRan" crackers that were quite tasty, they even agreed after they tried them. 5 grams of fiber!!! and then followed it up with prunes with my sandwich at lunch!!

    -The one you all called crazy, but now turns out to be right.

    ReplyDelete