kicking the can

I think it was The Accidental Tourist.

It was not one of the most important scenes in the film, but it helped to establish the character of William Hurt's family. His brother and sister are in the kitchen stocking the shelves -- alphabetically.

Obsessive-compulsive? Maybe. Eccentric? Certainly. Organized? Definitely.

I have lived that scene. Far before I saw the movie. My spice and herb jars are stored alphabetically. Always have been. Well, until Dora cleans that particular shelf.

My canned goods are not so well-organized. I do not use a lot of canned goods in my daily cooking. There is no reason for that here. Fresh vegetables and dried beans are available everywhere.

The canned goods are part tradition and part survival. My mother always kept a wide variety of canned goods in the house. It was not until I left home that I figured out why she kept about a year's worth of canned goods at the ready.

Even though I grew up in an era that people called America's Golden Years, there were always the possibility of bad times when revenue might stop following. The canned goods were insurance that the family would not go hungry. Tradition and survival. 

My pantry supplies keep that tradition alive. We live in an area that experiences earthquakes and tropical storms. It is good to have at least a modicum of food on hand should disaster strike. Chili. Beans. Tuna. Chilies. Soups. Anchovies. Sardines. That sort of thing. Along with a supply of dried beans and pasta in the refrigerator -- to dissuade the weevils and other beetles.

I seem to remember that the siblings in The Accidental Tourist were obsessed with pull dates. That is the date that is stamped on the can that is supposed to warn consumers away from eating the contents.

Some people are fundamentalists when it comes to pull dates. If they notice the declared date has passed, they will toss the can.

I am not a fundamentalist. I might be better called a pull-date pagan. If an "expired" can contains something I would like to eat, I check the cans for dents, and listen carefully when I open it. If the contents smell edible, I will eat it.

When I moved to Mexico, I brought a number of canned goods south with me from my Salem kitchen. Mainly soups. Those cans then followed me to my second rental.

One day, I looked at three cans of soup. I was not surprised that the pull date had passed at least ten years ago. But the cans looked fine -- if a bit corroded. I ate the soup and I am here to tell the tale.

I am not always that lucky. I had a six-pack of tomato paste that had been pushed to the back of the pantry. The pull date was five months prior. But the cans looked intact.

I opened the first can. The moment the can opener had cut a small slit, the paste almost exploded out of the can. The same thing happened with the second can. And the third. All six cans had gone off. And tomato products are not something to avoid the obvious signs of spoilage. botulism lives down that road.

Because my canned goods had become so jumbled, I decided to organize them into categories to make finding them a bit easier. And, if I was going to go to that much work, I grabbed a sharpie to write the expiration date on the label of each can. I hoped to avoid another tomato paste Vesuvius in my kitchen.

That is when I discovered the two cans of soup pictured at the top of this essay. You can immediately see two problems. The cans are almost three years past their pull date -- and they are both noticeably corroded. Actually, the tops were almost completely covered with rust That is not a good sign with cans.

Instead of tossing them, I opened them and smelled the contents. It smelled like a Campbell's product, but I decided to eat it despite that.

Some onion, garlic, serrano, ginger, and oregano dressed up the contents. And it was a quite refreshing dinner.

The best part is that I am still here to tell you the tale. And I did not have to come up with any euphemisms for emergency bathroom breaks. There were none.

I tossed some cans. Five cans of anchovies with oil leaks were the first to go. Anchovies are not hard to find here. And there were a couple of cans of tomatoes that had not yet expired, but the tops were bulging. A very bad sign.

The pantry is now organized and each can is sporting its use-by date. It will at least be some information to help me choose which can to use first.

So, I did not kick the can in the colloquial sense. But I may have kicked that can down the road -- like any practiced politician.