10.23.15

i discovered a prepper thread on consuming expired crackers when i took to the internet after joe and i each ate a 37-year-old saltine from a tin i bought for my birthday a few years ago. it's pretty great.

Now: I expected them to be Stale in some way, shape or form. But what I got was a *real* surprise.

[...]

"I tasted one (of the crackers) and let me tell you that 44-year-old crackers don't taste so good," Weinshall* said."It tasted like cardboard."

[...]

When the SHTF, I'm hoping my canned Mountain House crackers are tasty with my canned butter!

[...]

Canned crackers will out last a cockroach, I've eaten old C & K ration crackers 30-40 years old and they were still good.

[...]

I've had very good success with Ginger cookies. These are only $1.00 a bag a the Dollar Store, and I've been canning them in mason canning jars with a oxygen absorber and a rice packet (moisture). Then this summer I opened up one that'd been canned a little over two years ago and I've got to tell you (everyone agreed!!!) that canning it somehow made it taste BETTER. Those were the best cookies I think I've ever had.

in unrelated news, my friend V noted as we priced inventory at ye olde charity bookstore cafe yesterday afternoon that a bright pink shrink-wrapped volume was called "don't behead the concubines" (in german). should we have unwrapped it to figure out what it was? nah, we decided. we then spoke of unwieldy compound german words—i've long been fascinated with vergangenheitsbewältigung, or coming to terms with the past—and V talked about how she and her partner would mutter strange phrases at each other when they ran their cinema in the british virgin islands, because the locals found the sound of their speech delightful. she rolled out one of her favorite semi-onomatopoeic tongue-twisters, konstantinopolitanischer dudelsackpfeifemachergeselle; it means "person from istanbul who's apprenticed to a man who makes bagpipes." (i begged her to write it down for me.)

speaking of german, we are going to the opera on tuesday; we shall see tannhäuser. i have never been to the opera, and though our friend kevin, arranger of and companion on the opera adventure, assures us that extreme fanciness is not compulsory, i am making my hair extra-purple at this very moment in preparation; i plan to wear a black lace proenza schouler dress i found at the thrift store two doors down from ye olde charity bookstore cafe and a '50s black velvet wrap coat i found on our road trip to pittsburgh. the man who sold it to me is somewhat infamous on yelp for being prickly to his customers, but he and i were old pals as soon as i complimented him on his signed morrissey poster; we traded stories about show cancellations and mozzer's heart-shaped sweat patches. probably most people can manage a heart-shaped sweat patch with proper provocation.


*she survived, and is now helming the new york public library. onward! upward!