Disposing of the final things from the back of the pantry

The Mouse Incident led to us unearthing all sorts of jars and packets lurking at the back of the pantry - mostly unappealing soups and sauces, odd ounces left in the bottom of bags of pasta and a surprising number of packets of brown rice. (I periodically fancy brown rice salad, hoping to recreate one I used to buy from a health food shop. I never get round to making it, continue eating Basmati or easy cook white for normal purposes, forget I've got the brown and buy some more next time the fancy takes me.)

A crate of things has been sitting on the worksurface for weeks (months in fact) pending use or binning and yesterday we finally got round to throwing out the things we no longer fancy, such as a jar of African black-eyed bean relish seven years out of date, an equally old and rather odd sauce for couscous and couple of undated jars of other people's chutney in jars that hadn't been filled quite full enough. The revolting corroded state of the lid of one of them confirmed the wisdom of our decision that the bin was a better destination than our stomachs.



But the very old things did yield some pleasant surprises, in particular something called Symington's Table Cream.



It sounds like something from a bygone era - and indeed I came across this 1950s ad online - but it was a mere three years and two months out of date, so it's certainly from this millennium...



It turned out to be rather nice. But I better not buy any more (assuming it's still made) or it'll probably sit in the pantry for another five years...