My Mom Might Give Me A Consequence

When She Read This...

After my visit to the gym this morning I ran over to my parents house. I had told my Dad that I would clean out and organize his pantry for him.

For some reason, even though it is only the two of them, they like to buy canned items that they will never want to finish eating in their life time. A couple years ago when I cleaned out they had like nine cans of cranberry sauce. When I found them I imagined my Mom pushing her cart through the isle every week, seeing the cranberries and thinking, "Hmm, cranberries on sale. You can never have too many cranberries." And she'd throw them in her cart.

Today I didn't even find one can! Which is very odd since we are in between two holidays that cranberries are readily eaten in our family. Of course they are tradition at Thanksgiving, but we also eat them with our tamales at Christmas. I cannot even believe that we will actually have to buy them this year!

Anyway, today I pulled out a box of powdered milk, of all things, with an expiration date of November 2004.

The sad part is that I personally have cleaned out that pantry at least twice since 2004, so I guess part of the laugh is on me.

Taking out that box from the very back of the pantry reminded me of a time when I was between 8- 10 years old and my mother suddenly decided that we had to drink powdered milk. I have never enjoyed milk by the glass, but have always eaten it on cereal. I can remember that it tasted weird to me and that it had this strange bluish hue to it.

I am vaguely remembering that there was some sort of milk crises in the late 70's or early 80's. Was anybody else forced to drink powdered milk back then too? Does anybody remember what that whole thing was about?

I want you to know that if there is ever a canned green beans crises, I will be selling them from my Dad's pantry for a mere $20 bucks a can. Unless you are starving or something, then I would totally give them to you, but I must warn you, you'll never know how long they've been there.