What To Do With Old Food Storage: Surprising Use For Fruit Juice Mix
If you have some of this Fruit Drink Mix in your food storage, you can use it in your dishwasher to get rid of hard water spots!
Nothing like a pandemic to spur a person to check out their food storage in the basement. If we can’t make it to the store, or if the shelves are empty, what do we have on hand to eat? And if you don’t want to eat it, as in the case of my Fruit Juice Mix, what else can you do with it?
Back when I first started acquiring food storage, the advice from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was to sock away life-sustaining basics that would store well long-term, such as whole wheat, powdered milk, and sugar. Which is why there are hundreds of pounds of wheat still sitting in basements all over Utah. One of my friends told me they relied on their food storage for six months after their husband’s business closed. They were grateful to have it, but a daily diet based around beans, powdered milk and whole wheat became pretty monotonous.
Today the advice is to store foods you actually want to eat, then eat them before they reach the end of their shelf life, and re-stock.
But when you’re working, raising a family and keeping up with life, you don’t always think about keeping an inventory or lugging big cans of food storage up and down the basement stairs.
This past month I came across several 21-year-old cans of Fruit Juice Mix, a knock-off of Tang, from the Church cannery. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it looked and tasted fine. Tang was the astronauts’ drink back in the early days NASA’s space program, but these days, my husband and I don’t drink sugar-sweetened drinks. If we were in a famine situation, we would; but we’re not there yet. We might mix up a glassful for our grandkids once in awhile, or make a hot wassail drink for a Christmas party, but that’s about it.
It’s a little awkward to offer 20-year-old food to someone else, and I don’t think the Food Bank will accept food this old.
But Fruit Juice Mix is great for removing hard water build-up. I remembered reading Eugenia Chapman’s book, “Clean Your House and Everything In It.” She wrote that she used 1/2 teaspoon of citrus flavored breakfast drink (aka Tang) with her regular dishwasher soap to “make the glasses sparkle.” in her dishwasher. The citric acid in the drink does the work.
I’ve become a believer in Eugenia’s tip; I now add a little Fruit Juice Mix every time I use my dishwasher. But I use a teaspoon, I have plenty to spare, and I have really hard water.
Several online websites tout Tang for cleaning the hard-water ring on your toilet bowl. I tried it, and it works about as well as vinegar. One caution here: you have to let the citric acid sit for a couple of hours in the toilet bowl. And it looks just like someone didn’t bother flushing, which can gross out anyone walking in unawares. I’d recommend letting it sit overnight and scrubbing it off in the morning before anyone else has to use the bathroom.
Sometimes, you don’t have to eat food storage to use it.
Do you have any off-beat suggestions for using up your old food storage? Please share in the comments section!