On the perils of hoarding and moving

Now, if you are a vegetarian, this will not impress you, but last night J. and I ate homemade organic hamburgers (cooked rare) from Massachusetts-raised beef with Stilton and maple mustard and tomatoes from the back yard, accompanied by a frisé salad, topped with a hazelnut oil vinaigrette (and toasted hazelnuts), and a Peachy Canyon Zinfandel, which we'd bought something like two years ago after tasting one once at a party hosted by jazonlizard and perseverate and which we had been hoarding with the impoverished-graduate-student mentality that a bottle of wine that costs two whole digits should at least be saved for just the right food pairing.

It was all quite tasty.

Excepting the tomatoes and frisé (and the hamburger buns from the store down the street that sells them pre-bagged in sensible pairs), these ingredients had all been hoarded for months or years, in cupboards or freezers; we tend to collect foodstuffs and save them for special occasions that never seem to come, and now all of this is catching up with us as we prepare to put everything in storage for a year. There is a mandate to consume! The clock is ticking away, and there's all this odd food to be eaten! Granted, it's a problem that's a delight to have, and it certainly beats not having enough food, and with our current financial situation it's nice that we can live off our pantry and freezer and don't have to buy much beyond fresh vegetables and milk.

Still: we can get stressed about the damnedest things.

What's amazing is that the hazelnut oil hadn't gone rancid. We'd been saving it for three years, about 600% of its shelf life.