Old Wine Has Friends

So, after I made miso soup from the fish stock of a few weeks ago, I realized that the nori and miso I used also fell into the vintage category. Don't ask me why the thought only occurred to me a few days afterward. Must be all the vintage food is finally affecting me.

The miso was apparently "Best By 28 Nov 2006." Whatever, it's fermented--who can tell right? Anyway, I used it all up.

The nori, well, a pretty confident guess is 4+ years (light on the "plus"). Still tasted like the ocean, although less crumbly than dried seaweed usually is. You can't really tell from the photo, but the little dessicant packet (which apparently is lime, although it also had a lot of Japanese writing, so the translation could have been bad) was so full of water that it was puffed up like a little pillow. Not a problem, however, it went right into the soup so you couldn't tell. I did have a friend almost choke to death in front of me (not a joke) on a rubbery seaweed-wrapped sushi roll once. I cut this stuff into small pieces to be on the safe side, since it was a pretty freaky experience. The rest of the package is destined for the compost; I'm not taking any chances.

Good soup, though.