Vanilla wafers beyond the quantity needed to make a banana pudding. You makes your puddin' and the rest of 'em go stale 'cause nobody above the age of seven will eat them by themselves.

Guava jelly. Actually, it doesn't taste bad, it's just that "guava" sounds more like a festering parasitic intestinal condition than a food.

A five-pound bag of grits. Hey, I'm a native southerner and I eat grits. Maybe to the tune of about a pound a year. Five pounds is just de trops. I actually inherited the five-pound bag when one of my kids moved to California. He was afraid to take it with him. I think the consequences of getting caught with five pounds of grits in your car in California are much greater than for getting caught with five pounds of Humboldt County Sensimilla.

Argo corn starch. The only use I have for this stuff is to thicken gravy upon rare occasion. I think we've had the same one-pound box since 1985 and it's only 2/3 gone. It's a race now to see whether the box of corn starch outlives its owners.

Little jars of mustard from Christmas gift baskets. Does anyone really eat that shit?

Anything one buys at the last minute when a hurricane is approaching and the store's shelves are almost empty. Fear of the possibility of going without electricity for weeks can result in a drastic lowering one's culinary standards. A can of Spam can look like a T-bone steak. But once the storm blows over and everything's back to normal, it magically reverts to being nothing but a friggin' can of Spam. Until the next storm comes along.