What's The Oldest Item in Your Refrigerator?

[Misty]

So I'm cleaning out my refrigerator for the first time in forever, and I find a bottle of Aunt Jemima syrup. Best by: October 26, 2013.

I found it 2 weeks ago but it's still in the fridge. I wait for garbage day and then forget. I wouldn't be surprised if it stayed in there another four years.

Can anyone top that?

[morgana]

I moved here from Topeka four years ago. There are two bottles of booze in the fridge that moved up here with me . . .

[Dreamstalker]

Mom purges our fridge every few months, so I don't think we have anything older than a year in there...I do have a jar of chili paste with no date on it. That's probably the oldest as I bought it when I was still at my old job. Maybe 2 years?

My dad's fridge...don't ask. I think the last time I helped him clean it we found something from 2007...no, I don't know for sure what it was.

[Kittish]

We have a bottle of mineral oil that's at least 9 years old, but not sure that really counts. Probably cornmeal is the oldest food item in my fridge, it's two or three years old.

[MoonCat]

I don't have the equipment to do carbon dating...

but I think it's a jar of apple butter from when we moved to this house.

In 2005.

[Pixelated]

I don't have the equipment to do carbon dating...

BEST.

RESPONSE.

EVER.

And very apropos to my own situation. I've only just started on the front-most layer of ... whatever ... in the fridge. Heaven only knows what I'll find as I get closer to the back. If I suddenly stop posting here ... you know why.

[Seanette]

I don't think my fridge has any noteworthy inhabitants currently, but I'm now feeling a need to link to a few things .

There is, of course, a trope for this.

Garfield's owner, being a bachelor, has dealt with this.

And of course, Weird Al has some amusing things to say on the subject.

[Pixelated]

How could I forget Weird Al's paean to the life that evolves inside the fridge!

[Victory Sabre]

J.W. Lees 2008 Harvest Ale. I'll probably drink it next year.

[EricKei]

I've seldom left anything in the fridge long enough for it to go bad (except some cheese in a tupperware that I forgot for a month or so...it grew mold, so I tossed it, tupperware and all) -- Coming back to our fridge after Katrina kinda made me paranoid on that front

My pantry, on the other hand...Where I live now, I gotta remember to replace the box of hot chocolate every two years, and, at my old place, we had boxes of Jiffy mix (cornbread, et al) that dated back at least five years, at times, along with other things stuck way in the back. We just decided to let them be, lest we angered them.

[Ghel]

I have a package of nori in the freezer that's probably 10 years old. I've been trying to use up the package that's in the cupboard before using the one that's in the freezer. I guess my ex thought we'd be making sushi far more often than we did.

[mjr]

I think we still have Thanksgiving leftovers from two years ago. Also, I know at one point we had an entire pork butt in our freezer for something like 2 years.

[drunkenwildmage]

Not sure of the date, but once I had a meatloaf that was starting to sing versions of actual 'Meat Loaf' songs.

"Paradise by the Refrigerator Light”
“What every happened to Sunday’s Roast?”
“I will do anything for spuds, but I won’t do that”
"Loaf Out of Hell"
"Two out of Freeze ain't bad."

[AdamAnt316]

The refrigerator in our garage is an old Crosley Shelvador from the early-mid 1950s, which somehow still runs. It's old enough to have a real latch on the door, which is why we've nicknamed it the 'Kiddie Prison'. We don't have much in it, but there are some cans of beer in there which date back to the mid '90s. Most are Budweiser, but at least one of them is Meister Brau, which isn't even made anymore. Amazingly enough, the times we've drank some of the cans of Bud in recent-ish years, they somehow hadn't degraded to pure skunk piss..........
-Adam

[dalesys]

We've got some peanut butter >15 years old that smells like oil paint - the hausmeister uses it for mousetraps.

When Did We Have Sauerkraut? -- Lou & Peter Berryman