The Paper Plate: The Walking Dead Casserole

Through the months of March and April I decided it was time to sort through the pandemic food stock and replace some of the stuff from 2020 and distribute to family members whatever amount I couldn't possibly consume in a timely fashion by myself. I did one recipe I made a couple weeks or so ago, it was rather good. While going though the stock I happened to notice four cans of beans and I jar of spaghetti sauce that must have gotten overlooked used by date on them before stocking up during the pandemic. I had four cans of beans dated best used by 12/14/2019 and one jar of spaghetti sauce dated 5/28/2020 best used by. With most best used by dates being a couple years that means the beans were approximately five years old and the sauce close to four years old. I sat them on the table separate from the give away pile because, well, no one wants to have the family falling ill with food poisoning.

They sat there for a couple weeks when the local news ran a news segment on what to do with leftover pandemic stockpiles. Seems, according to them, it's perfectly okay to eat outdated can and jar goods as long as the cans do not have dents or show signs of having leaked and jars are not cracked and the lids are sealed tight. As long as they are adequately sealed no bacteria can enter through the cans or jars. The quality will have diminished but they are still edible. So I decided I would do me a Walking Dead casserole.

What the heck I thought. Might be a bit interesting to see myself play out the role you see so many times on the Walking Dead where they are on the hunt for food, any food to survive. Probably should have called it The Fear Of The Walking Dead casserole because to be quite frank and honest there is some fear to eating food that old, it goes against the grain of everything you are taught about food. If in doubt throw it out. Which pretty much ends up being everything four days old or older with the exception of some highly acidic foods which can last a bit longer. So I set about planning a recipe for what to make with my outdated food stock.

I decided to use:

1 can of the outdated beans, the black eyed peas
1 jar of outdated four cheese spaghetti sauce
1 pound of Italian Sausage
3/4 cups Rice
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 8 oz package mozzarella cheese
Mushroom stems chopped and what I call dust left from making stuffed mushrooms. The dust being the inside scraping of the caps
salt and pepper to taste but I normally don't salt food unless after cooking it's to bland or I am following a recipe

First I heated the oven up high enough to make a turkey blush, four hundred twenty five degrees. Just in case, lol. I put the sausage in a fry pan to cook and boiled water for the rice. I chopped the stems of the mushrooms and prepared the onion before opening the can of black eyed peas. Upon opening the can I had some serious second thoughts. There was a lot of skins floating around in that can, way more than normal and the peas looked like they had shriveled down quite a bit in size. They surely looked like they were calling out for a quick trip into the trash bin but I none the less went about my journey by rinsing them in the colander. After a bathing they didn't look quite so bad for the wear so I decided to eat one to see what it tasted like. It wasn't to bad but it wasn't that great either. Lost a lot of it's texture, more mushy tasting than the typical crunchiness of a bean.

I drained the grease from the sausage, drained the rice, put them in the casserole dish and added the remaining ingredients before tossing it all together with cheese and spreading some on the top the last ten minutes of baking. I baked for one hour on high heat.

After letting it set to cool from the volcanic boiling action it had going on after removing it from the oven I cut in for my first slice. I let it sit upon the plate contemplating if I really wanted to go through with this. I took a quick glance over to the dog who is never far away aspiring hope when I am cooking he'd get something thrown his way than decided I am insured and he's not so it's probably not a good idea to let him have a try at it first. I set about nitpicking at it at first. Taking a little of each ingredient at a time to see what it taste like. Not bad really, the beans were rather soft but otherwise it came out tasting just like Spanish rice. I waited a day before having a second helping just to be sure I wasn't going to suffer any ill effects. It's been a good week now and I am still here. That leave three cans of beans and two cans of two year old corned beef to get creative with. Stay tuned!