Disadvent 16

[psocoptera]

Yesterday was busy, and so I'm going to count something I actually did earlier in the week, which was to go through a bunch of pantry food and throw away a bag of past-use-by-date food we weren't going to use. I know they say canned goods are pretty much safe indefinitely, but some of the other stuff (like rice in one of those plastic pouches) maybe not, and past-date stuff freaks out one of the kids, and some of it I just didn't have the energy to try to contrive a use for. (Back at the start of the pandemic we bought a bunch of stuff outside our usual grocery patterns like boxed milk and canned fruits and vegetables, because we weren't sure whether supply chains would break down to the point where we couldn't get fresh or frozen stuff. I've managed to use some of it over the years but I just never think "oh I should use that can of carrots instead of cutting up these carrots". There were also some things that were artifacts of changed usage patterns, like there was a time when the kids were going through tons of parmesan cheese ("shaka shaka cheese") so we made sure to have extra in stock, and then they stopped, and if they're going to start again, I'd rather get them a fresh jar.) Anyways, throwing out food always seems like such a failure, but at least it also gets to be a successful disadventing?