Twinkie anyone?

I have been watching a really interesting series on TV called Life After People on the Discovery Channel. If you have comcast On Demand you can go under the series part and see all that have aired so far. Anyway....it is really interesting to see what might happen to earth after humans would disappear. Last night talked about places like grocery stores and what would happen if humans disappeared.

There were a couple of really interesting facts brought out from last night and one of them is Twinkies. Now we all know they are full of lard and sugar and as kids and even adults we still like them. This "food" has already been proven to last past its packaging date...some 25 years but it is estimated that Twinkies can last up to 100 hundred years past its date if the package has not been compromised. It has to do with the preservatives they put in them and I wont even attempt to name what those preservatives are because I don't think there is a spell check for those words but it keeps the cake and filling moist. Anyone for Twinkies now?

The other food mentioned was honey. Yes good old honey if stored in a "glass" jar with a very tight lid could last hundreds to even thousands of years and still be good. Talk about a restorative food. It may crystallize a bit but it is still good. They found honey in crockery jars in Egyptian tombs some 1400 BC that was actually edible.

The interesting thing is dehydrated food can last up to a hundred years if properly packaged. This intrigued me because my friend Denise got me a wonderful book on gardening that talks about canning, freezing and drying foods. So I might try my hand at drying foods this year and post about it.

The last really interesting thing was butter. Yes good old fashioned churned butter was found buried in Europe peat bogs and some of it was hundreds of years old and still edible. Why? Put in glass crocks and buried in the peat moss it was kept at a constant temperature and didn't allow any oxidation. You could eat it like it was normal.

What food is in your house that would last the test of time? Just FYI one thing that freaked me out is the bugs that lay eggs in your food (fresh, frozen, canned, organic doesn't matter) that the naked eye couldn't catch that hatch if not eaten or properly stored. FREAKED me OUT.