My appetite for survival is fairly small: If the ship is going down, I prefer to stay dry as long as possible and then go down with it. But this is a singular point of view and my partner, among others, doesn’t share it. He wants to be prepared for the worst while hoping for the best, and in these peculiar times, that includes stocking up on at least two weeks’ worth of food.
At first I resisted this because it had taken me more than a year to purge his kitchen, basement and garage of a huge variety of so-called comestibles. We all come into new relationships laden with some baggage, but very seldom does it take the form of copious amounts of seasonings, sauces, mysterious packets with faded labels and cans with sell-by dates 30 years past. The spices alone, alphabetized years ago on a rainy day with grandchildren, take up a huge cabinet. From anise and asafetida to celery (seed and salt) to rosemary, thyme and turmeric, including but not limited to huge containers of cinnamon, chili powder and garlic salt, the jars sit silent but faintly accusing, their contents a variety of 50 shades of gray, all tasting approximately the same. And I ask you, even if the asafetida weren’t 18 years old, how often would you use it anyway?
And the teas? A tray with dozens dating back to the previous century, many never opened but surely now all tasting of sawdust and dried grass, grace one shelf in uncomfortable proximity with some of the tens of containers of sauces — wasabi (dried, tubed and jarred), hoisen, hot sauces from Louisiana, Texas, Mexico, Brazil, etc., etc., some qualifying for the Antiques Roadshow, barbecue marinades, mustards, vinegars and … shall I go on?
There are also bottles of ancient vanilla and probably one of the first boxes of pancake mix Pillsbury ever manufactured.
When I first discovered all of this, I pointed out to my partner that a larder is, in fact, different from a museum. And that all the provisions were, in fact, no longer edible because the volatile oils in the seasonings had long since evaporated, leaving them tasting like ashes, at best; the nutritional value of decades-old food was questionable; and the prospect of cooking with ingredients that were old when my mother was young left me cold.
None of these arguments fazed him in the least. “Just use more,” he claimed of outdated seasonings. But (I said reasonably) more of something that tastes of nothing would still taste like nothing. “Nonsense!” he said, not accepting the premise.
We also have many things that I’ve never considered food at all: marshmallows, frozen corn dogs, Cocoa Puffs. (Corn dogs I love, but I don’t pretend they’re real food.)
Our “apocalypse box” still includes some of the most offensive foods: the elderly cans of ravioli, a few of the 17 kinds of hot sauces, the bag of pasta from Sicily, circa 1970, cartons of tonic water from the ’80’s (you never know when a gin and tonic will come in handy) and some questionable containers of white cornmeal and yellow grits from the back of the cabinet that have escaped notice since 1947.
Well, let’s hope for the best. But come hard times, and we are forced to break into the box, I invite everyone with a strong stomach and a courageous heart to join us for dinner.
Joan Jaffe lives in Norwich.