Surviving supper

Feast for a king and queen

My husband and I have this pact with each other.
Every year at one of the General Conferences we will haul out our 72-hour kits and check our supplies.
The hope is that when we need our emergency food, it will be edible.
And we're getting a little better at it each year.
(The first year we did this, we found food that had expired 3-4 years earlier and dead, crumbly Pop-Tarts which I foolishly figured were like Twinkies in lasting power.)
This time around, the food was only about a year past expiration date and that's only if you took "Best by 2011" as a suggestion, not a hard deadline.
We decided to try a meal with our food to see if ... A. we liked what we had stored and B. if it was not nasty or spoiled.
We chose a night when we were in a hurry anyway so entrees that could be heated and eaten quickly were a plus.
We laid out our fare.
Hmmm. We had our choice of canned beef stew, canned beans, canned ravioli, canned chicken salad and canned applesauce. We had some chocolate milk that didn't require refrigeration. We had beef jerky and some instant potatoes.
None of it looked like the equivalent of a whole, balanced meal so we decided to open everything and have a taste-sampling party.
We learned some valuable lessons.
1. We need to put in a pair of little scissors so we can open packets.
2. We need to be careful getting the little tin lids off...and pack more Band-Aids.
3. We need access to a microwave.
4. We need to set aside an aversion to the smell of processed foods. (At least I do. Marc can eat anything. I'd rather starve than eat something that smells like Chef Boy-Ar-Dee.)
At the end of the meal, we decided on a particular brand of beef stew we liked MUCH more than the off-brand. We elected NOT to try the one where the bottom bulged. We enjoyed the chocolate milk.
We voted in favor of the applesauce and the noodles but we went away craving a fresh carrot and real green peas.
Now we have to replace what we opened and sort of ate and I'm thinking this next time, hmmm, maybe chocolate bars and Twinkies?