How old is the oldest item you have found in your freezer?

[RonB]

We have ordered a new refrigerator because our current one is having issues, and I want to replace it before it dies. With Covid it seems that one pastime people have is shopping - including for refrigerators. What was in stock locally did not include the one I - err - we want. One place said they could get it in early May, but another place said they could install early April, and it was $500 cheaper too - Sold!

That brings me to my question in the title. We, (Wife), decided we should clean out the freezer. In the first shelf I found some Sir Lancelot flour from 2012 - that's nine years for the math challenged. And we still have the rest of the shelves to go...

So how old was the oldest thing you have found in your freezer?

[Willy]

Well, the package I found yesterday indicated that I bought it with Green Stamps...

[Willy]

LOL, Troutman . When I typed that, I wondered how many of the “young uns” heads that would fly over.

[rebuhl3]

Yeah, that's most definitely a reference that the younger crowd will have to fire up their search engine. LMAO
So, what exactly was in said green stamp-purchased package?!?

[Willy]

rebuhl3. I was “lying”—just going for cheap laughs among the geezers.

[HawkerXP]

We found the top of our wedding cake from 1984!

[fzxdoc]

I try to keep the freezer filled with stuff no older than 1 year but every once in a while, something hides in plain sight and sits happily for a couple of years. Now my pantry and spice cabinet are another thing altogether. It's like an archeological dig sometimes.

The big question is do you eat the old stuff from the freezer? We don't, if it's older than 1 year or so.

Kathryn

[Bkhuna]

Depends on how it was packaged. I think vacuum packing can add some additional time onto the best used date.

[lostclusters]

Just recently I found and eaten a three year old vacuum sealed serving of hoppin' john. It was still good and tasty. Some thing keep better that others in the deep freeze.

[RonB]

I just realized that the date on the flour was the expiration date, so it was probably somewhat older...

[grantgallagher]

Our freezer died a while back so i had to toss everything. Needless to say i was not paying attention to dates because it stank. Dont think ive pulled anything quite as old as 9 years though.

[Michael_in_TX]

The ribs from the prime rib I did in January of 2020.

[skipsdaughter]

We had a big storm and lost power for about a week in August. Since then, we also moved and I have not yet plugged in the deep freezer and have kept things pretty frequently used....but emptying out the freezer back in August had me saying goodbye to some surprising(ly old) items!

[Troutman]

Aunt Clara

[ComfortablyNumb]

So how many years have you been cashing her Social Security cheques?

[Troutman]

Cheques? Where you from?

[ComfortablyNumb]

Czechoslovakia, where we eat Chex Mix for breakfast and nobody checks on us whilst writing cheques.

The fact you ask must mean you are from Texas. Or possibly Illinois.

[ComfortablyNumb]

To go along with Troutman joke, I just saw my neighbour's son today. It's a long, long story, and one I'm sure you'd like to hear, but to keep it short the gold digger that got her meat hooks into his father passed away a few months ago. I had always told the son that if his father ever died she'd keep the body in a freezer so as to keep collecting his pension. He told me I was probably right, they found a brand new chest freezer in the house, plugged in with just one turkey and a package of cinnamon rolls in it. The rest of the house has been stripped of furniture, tools, anything of value, and the bank accounts cleaned out. The only thing saving his father is that his pension is enough to keep him in a care facility. The son offered me the freezer (I'm not one to turn down a free freezer) and has a roll off dumpster coming tomorrow to start getting rid of all the garbage left behind.

[jfmorris]

Sad story, and one that I think happens more often than it should.

[FireMan]

I have two small freezers & after getting a deer this past Nov, they are both full. I’ve got some work to do. Shopping for groceries is not one of them.

[willxfmr]

If you find yourself short on space, I would gladly store some of that venison in my WSM.

[dubob]

Last year when we did the annual defrost of the storage freezer, I found some packages of fish that were 3 years old. I decided then that keeping fish every twice a week fishing trip didn't make much sense for just two of us. I now catch and release a LOT of fish. Game meat, feathered or furred, doesn't last more than 6 month's in this house. I make a lot of jerky.

[jumbo7676]

It wasn't my freezer, but I recently cleaned out my pantry and found not one but two containers of popcorn kernels with a 'best by' date in 2013. I guess we don't each much popcorn in this house. The most confusing part is why, if we never actually make popcorn, did we decide these were important enough to not throw away when we moved from our condo to our in-laws' house for a month and then moved into our house in 2017, four years after they had already passed the date.

[jfmorris]

Personally, if its more than about 6 months old, and is in one of the 3 refrigerator freezers, I toss it due to freezer burn, unless its something that was really well vacuum sealed. The chest deep freezer is another story. Any leftover BBQ that is vacuum sealed and in the deep freeze gets discarded after 6 months. I'll cook ribs, brisket or butts that are up to 2 years old, but have never gone much more than a year.

A few years back, a lady from my church - single mom with teenage sons - knew from Facebook that I did a lot of smoking, and asked if I ever was smoking could she bring me a couple of butts from her freezer, and I told her sure. So, I sent her an email telling her I would be smoking one Friday, and she shows up the night before and drops off two butts. They were still frozen in the original cryovac, and one was 3 years old, the other 5!!!! I smoked them for her, one for slicing (185), the other for pulling (203F) at her request, and smoked my own fresh butts on the offset. She and her boys ate them and didn't die, so I guess they were ok!

I have a 7# vacuum sealed USDA Prime prime rib that is coming up on 16 months old - bought it from Christmas 2019, which I just never seem to find the opportunity to smoke due to COVID and such. I am fixing to pull it from the deep freeze, partially thaw enough to slice between the bones and turn it into some big thick ribeyes, which we will eat very soon. Next oldest thing in my deep freeze inventory is a 9.5# pork belly from May 2020, which I had PLANNED to do burnt ends with for Memorial Day or July 4th of last year, but both those big get-togethers were canceled due to COVID. I need to thaw it and make bacon, but then SWMBO doesn't like home cured bacon...