Dead food and live action

Marc and I have a strict policy: Every conference we check the food in our 72-hour kits and see what's expired.
If it's safe, we eat lunch out of what we've packed for the big disaster.
We've been pretty faithful but once in a while, we miss a checkpoint.
Apparently we missed the last one.
On Sunday, we looked through our dry noodles, instant potatoes, and soup tins for an edible meal.
The pork 'n beans were barely OK. So were the chicken and tuna salad entrees.
The applesauce has another six months.
The potatoes were set to expire in August.
The Capri Sun drinks were set to explode the next month.
So we set out a lunch feast of beans and tuna salad with nearly dead chocolate milk.
We munched along.
The tuna salad was pretty good but there were far too few crackers to go with it.
Marc heaped his chicken salad on his six and dealt with it.
An ice cube in the chocolate milk made it drinkable.
My beans were all right.
We saved the potatoes and the Capri Sun to share with our grandchildren at dinner. They thought it was a little strange to eat four kinds of instant spuds but they were good sports. The Capri Sun was a hit.
I know it's important to maintain a food storage supply.
I know expiration dates matter.
But we're also in an bit of an economic crisis here in our home so I can't in good conscience throw out "good" food.
It's just hard to eat it.
If it hadn't been for the chocolate cake and ice cream we had for dessert, I'm not sure it would have counted as a real meal.