Did you know crackers can go bad? We had a box of common crackers sitting on a shelf for a year or two, and we finally opened it to toast some to go with corn chowder last week. Laurie and Iris split and buttered the crackers, and I toasted them in the oven. The result was rancid, plasticky crackers.
But chowder without crackers? Impossible. So I sent Laurie to QFC for a replacement. She returned with Sailor Boy Pilot Bread.
Pilot and common crackers are both descendants of hardtack. Iris found this fascinating, because she loves pirates. The pilot crackers are the beefiest cracker you’ll ever meet. They’re round, about three inches in diameter, and thick. They’re made to be eaten in soup, but Iris just dove in and started crunching. “I love hardtack!” she explained.
Later we did a kitty-and-pirate story where someone was eating K. Rool’s hardtack and Keelhaulin’ Katie got stuck in the hardtack box. The story got confusing, however, because Iris kept eating the props.
I really liked the pilot crackers too, at least in chowder. Hopefully we can finish them off before they go rancid.
A sailing friend of mine assures me that pilot crackers do not go rancid…
Once upon a time I had a jar of Mothers Gefilte fish that got lost in the back of the pantry. Then it migrated to a top shelf spot in the laundry room behind the kitchen. Eventually, I found it and wondered if the goods inside were still, well, good.
I called the manufacturer to ask about date stamping on the package. I couldn’t find it – and rightly so, for it seems they don’t date code that product.
“How do people know if the fish is still good?”, I asked the representative. She told me that people usually eat it right away and the question has never come up.
All I knew was that this item was more than one and possibly more than two years old. I threw it away.
(jarred gefilte fish is a really odd phenomenon amongst the gefilte fish eating population. It’s a $6 bottle of ground, seasoned and poached pike and whitefish. Much better when made from fresh fish but quite a production though nowadays you can get a frozen loaf of fish and cook it yourself.)