“God, this is like cleaning out Steve’s refrigerator and cabinets when we came to America,” announced my wife Jen from my mom’s kitchen.

From my vantage point on the sofa, I could tell that my culinary recklessness had made the headlines. Again.

While Jen and Mom were ridding the fridge and freezer of antique leftovers and stinky seafood, my wife thought she’d compare this purge with The Big Purge of 15 years ago.

As the story goes, I had been enjoying the carefree lifestyle of a bachelor into my mid-40s, when I caught the highly contagious Family Man Syndrome. When the Magic 8 Ball tells you to go meet the woman you’ve been chatting with for months, why, you head to the Philippines for some courting and eventually a wedding.

Jen and our daughter Geni cleared the immigration hurdles a year later and arrived in the Merrimack Valley where they were immediately introduced to my food pyramid whose architect was a Coney Island hot-dog-gulping-winner-turned-sumo-wrestler.

Said food pyramid consisted mainly of the Gorton’s group and its marvelous line of minced, re-shaped and highly preserved frozen fish; the Spam group of salty, canned mystery meats; the popular cookie/cracker group; and the final 1 percent of the pyramid was fruits, veggies, nuts, grains and pre-obesity Ozempic trial meds.

Also — and this is key to our story — I considered expiration dates to be mere suggestions. Like stop signs.

When labels suggested something like, “Buy Before 6/15/2006,” I assumed we had some wiggle room right up to and beyond 2009. The United Gastroenterologists Guild (UGG!) supports my theory and appreciates all the business I’ve sent them after Tuesday Take-a-Chance-on-Me black-market taco nights.

Terms like “Best purchased by …” are ambiguous. Sure, hot dogs are best when served within the same calendar year you bought them, but they are better than tripe of any era. And they are still good taste-wise even when you purchase them from the Sunoco rotisserie-of-death.

So what seemed like an eternity that had passed between the expiration date and the scheduled consumption date was, in fact, an eternity.

But it seemed less of an issue when gasoline is your regular hand cleaner and your sleep mask is a cat.

Within hours of arriving, my new bride took it upon herself to scrutinize the contents of my cabinets and freezer. Like a TSA agent in an apron.

She didn’t approve of what she saw: My Saltines were in packaging featured on vintage Facebook pages. Cans of Franco American were printed in olde English.

Long-forgotten jars of Chex Mix — the Kibble ’n Bits for upright mammals — were discovered behind cans of lettuce.

None of this fazed me. Cheap trumps healthful any time in my book.

Nevertheless, all of these questionable foodstuffs and a whole lot more were discarded with prejudice.

Then came the freezer discovery.

Tucked in the maximum-security portion of the low shelf was something the size of my fist, wrapped in white paper.

In retrospect, the object should have been cordoned off with yellow crime scene tape. I unwrapped what appeared to be a slab of pink sponge with skin. Upon further review I concluded the mystery flesh was salmon.

“That’s odd, I don’t recall buying salmon recently,” I thought as I poked the freezer-burned relic. And by recently I meant within the last five years.

Sure enough, the label’s hieroglyphics were translated to a sale date seven years earlier.

I remember thinking, “This’ll clean up nice with a higher watt microwave and some mayo.” For the next few minutes, I considered ways to resuscitate this once noble dinner fish.

Then it occurred to me that I’d been pondering ways to devour something that a starving raccoon would pass off to a skeptical seagull.

Perhaps this hunk of mutant salmon should be tossed in the trash. On a different continent.

Not long after, Jen asked if we had eye drops and I directed her to a cobweb-covered medicine cabinet. She proceeded to dribble several drops into her eyes. Rather than soothe dry, itchy eyes, it substantially increased the irritation.

“This stuff made it worse!” she announced. “What’s the expiration date?”

“Didn’t know there was one. Uhh, hmm. You stay put while I get you on the cornea transplant list,” was about the best I could come up with.

A handful of flushes eventually put out the fire. The expiration date was 17 years earlier.

“Why didn’t you throw that away?” she asked.

“I’ve been busy. And you know how often I misplace my reading spectacles … and this economy …”

Lesson learned. Eye drops older than your teen daughter will turn on you. Best to part ways much sooner.

So days from 2026, about 80 percent of the freezer’s contents landed in a pair of EPA-approved garbage bags and deposited into heavy plastic trash barrels.

The worst offenders were scallops whose aroma would scare off the most finicky scavengers in New England. And some unidentified product which expired in 2023.

I’m thinking my casual approach to food preservation and consumption may be hereditary.

The rotten apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.