The start of the new year is a good time to go to the kitchen and pantry and throw out expired foods. It would be peculiar to go to the sun room to do this, considering how much expired foods add a ``lived-in'' look and Canned Smooshed Peas stains. It's downright eccentric if you haven't got a sun room. The sun is that yellow-y glowing thing turning up most days and ten percent of nights. It doesn't like peas either. Its relationship with Mangled Corn Kernels is complex, having the square root of minus five in a critical role, shortstop.
Once you get up, raring to go say, Saturday morning --- I'm usually ready for Saturday morning rare by 2 pm Sunday --- take a serious, stern look at your food so it feels guilty about spoiling. More sensitive foods, like egg noodles, will change their labelled dates to escape your hatred. Don't be fooled. The egg noodles are in the way far back of the top-most shelf, the one you can't see and have to feel around and why is there something viscous there? Do not get a chair and look.
Be perfectly clear what you mean to do. With careful thought you can complicate even the simplest task, leaving you too unclear to do anything, justifying forgetting the whole project. This is the efficient use of your time, so you won't do that until after extended debate muddles the differences between cans of Carrot Goop and of Spanish-Style Sauerkraut, which you suppose you bought after losing a bet. You did not; you bought them to meet quirkier terms of the ransom demand, and finding them still in your pantry explains why you haven't heard from Moe in four years.
It's tricky to judge when to throw out food. Is that can of Tomato Innards bad just because it expired yesterday? Nonsense; would we say we were bad today just because it was tomorrow? Merely asking the question makes us suspect we're being set up for one of those things where we prove the Pope is a cheese sandwich, belonging in the vending machine, where he expired last Whitsuntide. If you find such cans, hurry to use them, such as by constructing a fortress. Dusty bottles of Diet Coke With Lemon make nice Quaker Cannons, in case thirsty Quakers visit.
But sentiment and the need for a lookout tower only go so far. Get rid of any food whose expiration date is given ``A.U.C.'', or that list July as ``Quintilis'', as July is shy about that name. Start using it and July worries you're going to take out pictures of its first nones or make it perform a Furrinalia. You don't need Cling Ravioli enough for that trouble.
You may not ignore food exhalation. The sighing from a cabinet of canned or boxed goods is disturbing when it starts, about 3:30 am after you've been having morbid thoughts all night, and gets worse. If it happens disconnect all your kitchen appliances from the Internet; this lets them get some sleep instead of arguing on food-mockery forums, and they will yawn less. This is the most important part of food exhalation.
Food perspiration is disgusting but explains that viscous stuff on the top-most shelf. If your food starts sweating, stride briskly out of your house and do not return. Leave it for anyone else to deal with. They won't, obviously, and the consequences can be dire. Most urban planners agree Detroit's population decline began with Sweaty Tuna Fish just off Eight Mile Road in 1964, but they don't want to touch that stuff.
After hours you can be proud to have thrown out nearly two half-empty boxes of The Worst Instant Stuffing Mix Ever and four packets of Bleah Onion Soup mix, plus a bottle of Fat-Free Mayonnaise Salad Dressing the previous owners left you as punishment. You should enjoy smoother handling and better mileage, although the loss of bulk might hurt your traction on icy or snowy roads. That though explains why you have bags of egg noodles: egg noodle makers are breaking into your house and sneaking them in.
Trivia: A February 1963 report on the plan to use a Saturn V to launch the Project Voyager space probe to Mars (unrelated to the Voyager which actually flew) judged the Saturn V's 18,000-kilogram payload capacity to be 6.6 times what was needed for the first Voyager flights. Source: On Mars: Exploration Of The Red Planet 1958 - 1978, Edward Clinton Ezell, Linda Neuman Ezell. NASA SP-4212.
Currently Reading: Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, And A Vast Ocean Of A Million Stories, Simon Winchester.