the third challenge

Ingrid’s challenge....
How long can you go without needing to buy anything?
Ok. Well this is a good one for me. Ingrid did suggest it could be food or food and other things but I’m going to stick to food and see how it goes. On the one hand I deplore consumerism but on the other I do buy stuff a lot. I kind of justify my eating habits on the basis that I usually check out the yellow sticker section first and let that tell me what I’m eating, but then I frequently end up buying various other ingredients to go with said yellow sticker purchase. Also I use the ‘oh I’ll just check the yellow stickers out’ excuse to go into shops and then end up buying stuff because it looks nice, or I fancy it, or because it’ll come in handy.
Having only moved here within the last few months I haven’t built up a huge hoard but even so my freezer is pretty much full, I’d be hard pushed to name everything that’s in there.
So this is the challenge – not to buy any more food until I have eaten what is in my cupboards AND to make it last as long as I can – I had to add the last bit in or I’d just have a monster pig out and clear the lot in a few days.
But how long can I make it last? What do you think? In the same way that I wouldn’t ask anyone to guess how many gobstoppers were in a massive jar of gobstoppers without showing them the jar I don’t expect you to make an uninformed guess. Here’s what I’ve got:
A fridge freezer of the big freezer, tiny fridge variety, freezer ¾ full, quite a bit of meat and fish and bread in there, fridge mostly jars of stuff, and some deep-cold muscle rub (which will not be getting eaten). One standard kitchen cupboard full of food and I mean full – bags of dried stuff and tins and rice and such like. Two more cupboards with not much in them – spices, herbs, teabags, oil and what have you.
I generally get fed about twice a week at work with various free food at seminars, also we get free fruit (which I sit right next to!) which lasts until about Wednesday, and pastries on a Monday morning, and cake when someone has a birthday. Honestly – it’s like my bosses have worked out what motivates me or something.
Because I’m not a complete masochist I’m NOT including alcohol bought outside the house, or cleaning stuff – not that I buy much of that anyway but I’ve tried home-made clothes washing stuff before and it never smelt that great or got things actually clean – not an issue when you’re on a mountain with goats for company but I would actually like to keep my job and my friends. Also I will let myself eat out, but no more than twice a week.
What’s the oldest food you’ve got in your cupboards?