Vintage Watch

I want these to expire so I can eat them all. Think they'll last until 3/30/10?

I'll probably have to hide them.

Cocoa Powder

I put this in the blender with coffee. And ice. And sugar. I think I bought this many many years ago. I once thought you could stick it in heated milk and have hot chocolate. They don't really tell you it's unsweetened on the box and that you really, really need to add sugar. This one is still good. It will probably be good forever.

Don't judge me.

Best. Blender. Ever.

I love this blender. It is model number 8 from the late 1960s or early 1970s (very early 70s). One of the oldest blenders in the world. It is better than my blender and I love it so much.

Recently I replaced the bottom blade part since I broke it. Now I can make vintage things in this vintage blender. Like frappuccinos out of vintage ingredients. You'll see tomorrow. :)

Delightfully Vintage Dill Relish

This stuff expired in December 2007. I figured this out as it was almost down to the bottom of the jar. It's still fabulous!!

Wholly Guacamole

This stuff was supposed to be used or frozen last September!!!!

It wasn't the best but it could have been worse I guess. I tried to like it. :)

Salad Dressing Surprise

I was innocently making a salad and looked for a salad dressing, without fish, to use. I pulled out this dressing and was taking the paper label off the top to unscrew the cap when I noticed that the expiration date was November 14, 2005.



The taste isn't stellar, it's more vinegar than red wine but it'll do in a pinch.

Feliz cinco de mayo, un poco tarde

As a late celebration of Cinco de Mayo, I pulled this gem of a burrito out of the freezer. Late 90s is the best guess as to its purchase date.

If you look closely, you can see giant ice crystals on it. Surprisingly, this didn't taste freezer burnt, although (not surprisingly) it didn't taste good, either. According to the wrapper, it was a chicken burrito, but it was more like refried beans and some small gritty pieces. The tortilla also took a lot of beverage to get it to go down. Pretty dried out and crackly. Probably the microwave cooking method didn't help. I'm not a fan of microwaved burritos, but I was in a hurry and the oven method took too long. Not my favorite vintage lunch (or was it breakfast?), I can tell you that. 

How to trick youself into eating ice milk instead of sinfully rich ice cream

This all began as a way to eat the jarred cherries from a previous post. They would be incorporated into a delicious batch of knock-off Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia ice cream. The ice cream recipe used was buttermilk-based. The head notes for the recipe promised frozen heaven in a bowl. Well, we'll see about that.

I had actually forgotten to buy buttermilk, but lucky for me, I was able to pull a box of powdered buttermilk out of the pantry. How old is it? No date, but when I asked if anyone knew, the response was, "You're not going to use that, are you? It's really really old." This coming from someone who had no problem with me using egg yolks that have been in the freezer since last Christmas cookie season (we'll get to the egg yolks in a minute). Which ingredient ended up causing problems? I'll give you a hint: not the buttermilk. Maybe if the egg yolks weren't shoved in the freezer in a bowl with nothing but saran wrap to protect them, it would have been a different story, but then, hindsight is 20/20.

Into the mix went the aforementioned egg yolks. Although they had been transferred from freezer to refrigerator a few days before I made this, they were still sort of solid. And by sort of solid, I guess I mean really really solid. It did fleetingly cross my mind not to use them, but hey, you've gotta take chances once in a while, right?

So, using the old egg yolks, questionable powdered buttermilk, and remaining ingredients (all of which were appropriate for use in a non-vintage recipe), I attempted to make the custard which would then be frozen into ice cream.

Well, besides cream, it's the egg yolks that make ice cream sooooo good. However, although I did make the custard with 12 egg yolks they all sort of solidified into tiny chunks. It looked like a big curdled mass. Sadly, all that creamy goodness had to be strained out of the ice cream :(

But, still I persevered--into the ice cream went vintage jarred cherries. A little scary looking, but they did taste fine.

There are also some vintage chocolate chips in there that you can kind of see.

And here's the final product. How did it taste? Well, let's just say, it's not my best batch of ice cream. No creamy goodness was detectable. Basically, I ended up with vanilla ice milk with chocolate chips and cherries. I could have just left out the egg yolks and saved myself from having to spend 15 minutes trying to scub egg yolk chunks out of the strainer I used. Maybe if I had used the yolks for an omelette, they would have been fine, but ice cream was a bad idea. So sad...

Moral of the story? Old powdered buttermilk = good. Old solidified egg yolks = bad.

I Can't Believe I Actually Ate This But....

....I fininshed up the second tub of cream cheese. Usually I smell things to make sure they don't smell rotten and are as safe as I can figure. I ate this cream cheese with a cold and can't believe I survived. I had no safety sniff to make me feel better about it being safe.

I did survive. No problems, I guess it was still good. Ugh.

Coffeemate Substitution

I found a substitution for the creamers I had been going through!!! It's a bit of a step up too since it comes with accessories! "Accessories?" you might ask. YES!!! It comes with millions of tiny, and very expired, marshmallows. Delishiously vintage I might add. This giant container of hot chocolate mix has a best by date of November 2007.

Mmmmmmmmmmm marshmallows.........

Oh, and it is going in my iced coffee, like the coffee mate, since it is now spring/summertime and with the best of luck the vintage foods will be gone by next winter.

For the record

The food in the house has never gotten this bad.

Coleslaw! Revisited

I just found this gem of a picture showing the inside of the coleslaw jar and had to share it. It also clarifies the date it is from. If you blow this bad boy up you'll see that November 1994 was the expiration date.

Onion & Chive Cream Cheese

Some of you might have attended a certain birthday party for a certain 1 year-old the very first weekend in April. If you attended, you may remember there was cream cheese for that morning and the next for the bagels that also arrived. Well, the bagels are long gone but the cream cheese remains.

I think you know what is coming......I ate it. It was still good a month after opening despite saying please consume within 7 days of opening (you know how well that goes around these parts).

And I didn't even get sick!!! Guess I have no reason not to try the other still in there.

Coleslaw!

Anyone game for this?

I sure wasn't, that's why this 12 year-old jar of cole slaw dressing has been destroyed. It broke my heart seeing all that brown gooey goodness go down the drain but I think I'll make it through.

Poor septic system. I hope it doesn't decide to revolt.

A Week of Vintage Binge Drinking - Day 5

The 5th and final day of vintage drinking came from the same box of whiskey sour mixes I used earlier in the week. Peeking up from inside the box were a few envelopes of Tom Collins mix. Same fancy 70s graphics, same ingredients, different drink to make.




One vodka collins later I was busy pondering why they bothered to make different envelopes for the same drink. And how I can get that sweet font added into Photoshop.

A Week of Vintage Binge Drinking - Day 4

I have had this bottle of Coloma since the late 90s or very early naughties (meaning the first half of 2000). Sick of it floating around the freezer and wondering what to do with it I decided to google what you would do with coffee liqueur. Apparently it is in mudslides.




So I made one.


Here is the recipe:
1 oz coffee liqueur
1 oz vodka
1 oz irish cream liqueur (I substituted irish cream syrup, non-alcoholic)
1 oz cream (I used half-and-half, mmmm)

Shake and pour over ice. I think I would have liked it better minus the vodka, plus more cream. This sucker really packed a punch though. The bottle was 2 oz so I had to double everything. :)

A Week of Vintage Binge Drinking - Day 3

This deliciously vintage peppermint schnapps had been floating around the kitchen and pantry for quite some time. Somehow, it made it into some chocolate milk that I happened to be drinking today. I couldn't tell it was old, and by the time I was done drinking it, I didn't care!

A Week of Vintage Binge Drinking - Day 2

Sometimes not all of the wine ages well.

And wine with cork in it is not delicious.

A Week of Vintage Binge Drinking - Day 1

Last summer I discovered I like whiskey (especially in mint juleps, thanks Jen!). What better way to celebrate my love for whiskey than to make a vintage whiskey sour with a 30 year old mix packet?

And if the torn envelope doesn't convince you this is vintage whiskey sour mix, let me leave you with a picture of the box.

Vintage Seeds - The I Can't Believe It's Not Butter Edition

Okay so I'm trying again with the vintage seeds. I sprinkled 9 packets of seeds that were all 10 or more years old on the ground in an unused part of the garden to see what will grow.



They include some, I think mislabeled, seeds that show parsnips but are called Parsley. On the back it tells how the edible part is the root. Um, yeah, I think they call those parsnips.

Perhaps that's why I've never again heard of Perry Morse seeds.

And if you're wondering why the title says it's the I Can't Believe It's Not Butter edition, it's because that's where the wild flower garden packet of seeds says it's from. WTF?!? Why would a butter company give away flower seeds? Maybe Fabio had something to do with that.