Here’s to Lack of Social Responsibility

Jeers to money-hungry CEO’s that knew their pistachios were contaminated with salmonella and decided monthly payments for their timeshare in Boca was a better allocation of company money.

“The Setton Pistachio inspection report said: ‘After receiving sample analysis results for your roasted pistachio products that were positive for Salmonella beginning in October 2008, your firm continued to process roasted pistachio products under the same processing conditions until March 2009.’”
http://www.foodqualitynews.com/Food-Alerts/Setton-Pistachio-knew-of-salmonella-says-FDA

Roasting pistachios should kill any salmonella. Setton Pistachio said that raw pistachios were cross contaminated with roasted ones so everything was re-roasted to make sure salmonella was killed, a common industry practice.

Where the company went wrong: they were careless when re-roasting, didn’t retest to make sure salmonella was in fact killed off, and didn’t bother to figure out how the batches we cross contaminated in the first place.

And why should they? That would require hiring an extra worker or two for minimum wage to do a job a monkey could figure out. And for what? To prevent Americans from becoming violently ill and dying of salmonella poisoning? Pistachio enthusiasts can just chug some Mylanta and deal.

ConAgra Sucks the Fun out of a Lazy Frozen Dinner

ConAgra Foods, major packaged food producer including the popular Banquet label, found out that their lazy-night-deliciousness frozen chicken pot pies not only come with “real chicken and vegetables,” but also with a healthy serving of freshly cultured salmonella. Problem is the company couldn’t figure out which of their 25 ingredients posed the salmonella threat, so they went to testing.

“Threatened with a federal shutdown, the pie maker, ConAgra Foods, began spot-checking the vegetables for pathogens, but could not find the culprit. It also tried cooking the vegetables at high temperatures, a strategy the industry calls a “kill step,” to wipe out any lingering microbes. But the vegetables turned to mush in the process.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30747767/

Bacteria prefer a temperate climate of 40° and 140°F to multiply in your pot pie. So the food industry 40-140 rule of thumb says that you should store food either below 40°F or cook it until the product’s internal temperature is above 140°F to avoid food-bourne illnesses. ConAgra claims it tried.

So what was their genius plan? Have the consumer do it. That’s right, they want the consumer to use their nuclear powered microwaves to heat up the pot pies to reach an internal temperature of 165°F, in several spots no less. I wonder if they sell those at Costco?

I don’t know about you but I can tell the internal temperature of any food product within one degree simply by rubbing my left elbow in concentric circles counterclockwise.

Isn’t the whole purpose of the lazy-night-deliciousness frozen chicken pot pie to NOT whip out a meat thermometer and painstakingly check the temperature but simply to nuke and shovel down?

Whatever happened to social responsibility on ConAgra’s part? Umm, FDA.. hello.. you there?

Cinco de—Are you Kidding Me?!

Shame on overpriced drinks in celebration of Mexico defeating the French. I met friends at Los Dados on Washington and Gansevoort (which, by the way, overlooks a half-finished elevated train track that runs into a building.. what’s that about MTA?). For the maybe 45 claustrophobic minutes we spent there, we ordered two double margaritas and four shots of Patron. Soon after the overcrowded-ness became overbearing so we asked for the check.. which came out to a whopping $121, $26 for each double margarita and $60 for four Patron shots.

I get it, it’s the Meatpacking district, it’s fabulous so it absolutely warrants paying $160 (after tipping) for a few drinks on a Tuesday night. But the last time I checked we were celebrating Cinco de Mayo in a recession during a swine flu outbreak and Mama Lina doesn’t blow her dinero so frivolously.

Their chips and guac were painfully average and, if they have the best Mexican food in the city, I wouldn’t know because I would probably have to take out a mortgage just to pay for it. Viva Mexico.

The Truth About Pravda

This weekend I visited Pravda (“the truth” in Russian), a vodka/caviar bar on Lafayette near Houston. It features vodka from all over the world (as well as the motherland) and can be served anyway from a cocktail to on the rocks along with Russian-inspired food. Being off the Russian boat myself, I reveled in the experience. The entire space is designed to look like a Russian subway station, down to the subway lights and Russian words donning the whole place.

An old Russian anecdote even graces the first page of the menu that translates to, “What a sober person has on their mind, a drunk person has on their tongue.” Pravda definitely falls short of being remotely similar to restaurants in Brighton Beach, and for the better. It provides customers with an urban Russia experience mixed in with the chic-type of bars of SoHo/Nolita.

Though, if you want the full-on Ruski effect, order the lox and caviar pizza.. Not palatable to my taste buds but considered a delicacy throughout Eastern Europe. Best of all, this place is full of seats so you won’t find yourself regretting those 4 inch make-my-legs-look-fabulous-but-kill-my-feet heels.

My one quib: they played hard-core salsa music the entire night. Either the owner is from the Mexican part of Siberia or he’s trying to get consumer confidence back on track to serve pork again after the swine flu scare (which the media made out to sound like the next bubonic plague but, big surprise, they overreacted). I don’t expect them to play Ode to Stalin or KGB Techno but anything else would have been more appropriate.

Otherwise, a great place for a night out!