Canned soup really can go bad. April 6, 2006

Every semester, once or twice, I go through a period of starvation.  Not usually from being completely broke (although that happens sometimes, too), but from not having the time or energy to commit to going to the grocery store.  Plus not having a way to get there besides walking and hauling back unmeasurable pounds of groceries (which I used to do, but is NOT fun) or coercing B&J into taking me.  Normally they do take me, every two weeks.  This past weekend, though, when I should have gone, Sarah was down visiting and they were going to all watch a movie after Brian took me home.  I didn’t want to keep him waiting on me and the girls waiting on him all night, so I didn’t ask if we could go.  Result: no food.  It wouldn’t be so bad except that the last time I did go shopping I only got the necessities because I was low on money.  So for the last week or so I’ve been scrounging.  I ran out of bread and all bread products a long time ago.  I’ve been eating peanut butter and jelly or peanut butter and molasses mixed together in a bowl because I didn’t have any bread to put it on.  That was at least until the peanut butter ran out.  (The positive side: I don’t have to worry about crumbs being in my peanut butter.)  So basically, I have pretty much nothing left.  Even the things you think will always be on your shelves are gone.  At the end of last semester I was living on potatoes and quick oats, and right now I don’t even have those.  I don’t want to sound like I’m whining – I think it’s amusing more than anything   Anyway, today I was so hungry I decided to make a go at the canned tomato soup that’s been sitting on my shelf for…well, that’s the thing.  I don’t know how long it’s been there.  A couple years, at least.  I was like, “This stuff doesn’t go bad, does it?”  Then I looked on the bottom of the can.  Exp: July 2006.  SWEET.  Still good!  But man, you know how expiry dates on things like that are always like 10 years after you buy them.  So who knows how long it’s been there.  That can’t be healthy.  I had three other cans, and they’d all already expired.  November 2005, February 2006, March 2006.  Mmm.  Or maybe the whole expiration thing is just a scam by the soup companies so that I have to go out and buy more soup to sit on my shelf for another 10 years.

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