Culinary Assistance

This post is a follow up to a conversation that Sweaterman and I were having with some other folks last week. Both Sweaterman and I consider ourselves pretty good cooks (actually, Sweaterman is a great cook), and we were discussing how to make meals with minimal ingredients on hand. If you have a good feel for how foods go together, it doesn't take a whole lot to make a decent meal. But several of the other people who were part of the conversation were...how to say it politely...more culinarally challenged. One went so far as to say that she would never attempt to cook something without a recipe, while another resorts to fast food when unsure what to cook. So I'd like to share a wonderful resource with folks like them. Just go to Supercook.com and plug in whatever ingredients you have at hand, and it will spit out a recipe. It will also ask if you have certain other things available in order to offer additional ideas and options. While I don't personally need it, I've run some tests based on what I have in the cupboard and fridge and I've been impressed with the results. The recipes are all fairly simple and straightforward, not 'Julia Child' gourmet but easy, tasty, relatively healthy meals that most anybody can prepare.
(except Ducky, who has difficulty with the recipe for boiled water)

Meet the meat

More beef recalls for e. coli. Nice to know that they're taking action to protect us, right?
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003741087_beefrecall09m.html

LOS ANGELES — A meat supplier has expanded a voluntary recall of ground beef
that may be contaminated with E. coli bacteria.

United Food Group said in a statement this week that it expanded the recall of 75,000 pounds of ground beef to include an additional 370,000 pounds based on "unspecified concerns" raised by the California Department of Health Services.

The recalled products were shipped to grocery stores in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. They were sold under brand names Moran's, Miller Meat, Stater Bros., Inter-American Products and Bashas'.

What really infuriates me is the timing. Notice the "sell by" dates:

The products have "sell-by" dates from April 29 to May 6 and may have "freeze-by" dates of April 28, April 30 or May 7. The establishment number "EST. 1241" is stamped inside the USDA mark of inspection or is printed on the package.

I'm a simple bachelor, and I usually eat what I buy within a few days. It's now June, so ground beef that had "April 29th" as a "sell by" date has been consumed. Guess I got lucky.
It would be nice to know that the groceries I buy today are safe TODAY, dammit.
Thanks to Monkeyfister for the tip.

Thought for Food

One of the most basic things we as taxpayers should expect from our government is that our food is safe. Thanks to the anti-government administration, this is no longer the case. Seems to me that safe groceries should be a basic right.

Updated: 7:13 p.m. MT Feb 26, 2007

The federal agency that’s been front and center in warning the public about tainted spinach and contaminated peanut butter is conducting just half the food safety inspections it did three years ago.

The cuts by the Food and Drug Administration come despite a barrage of high-profile food recalls.

“We have a food safety crisis on the horizon,” said Michael Doyle, director of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia.

Between 2003 and 2006, FDA food safety inspections dropped 47 percent, according to a database analysis of federal records by The Associated Press.

FDA ‘just can't manage the job’
That’s not all that’s dropping at the FDA in terms of food safety. The analysis also shows:

• There are 12 percent fewer FDA employees in field offices who concentrate on food issues.
• Safety tests for U.S.-produced food have dropped nearly 75 percent, from 9,748 in 2003 to 2,455 last year, according to the agency’s own statistics.http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17349427/

Feeling the outrage? Rick Perlstein is:

E. coli conservatives

Submitted by Rick Perlstein
on Tue, 2007-04-17 20:35.

First, they came for the spinach.

I remember the day last September. The supermarket had a new kind of salad dressing, one that looked like it would taste good with spinach. I went to the produce section to buy a bag. But they all had been recalled. Three people had died from E. coli contamination from eating spinach. I decided I could live without the spinach.

Next they came for the peanut butter, and I didn't pay much attention. I don't much like peanut butter.

Then they came for the tomatoes. Then the Taco Bell lettuce.

Then the mushrooms, then ham steaks, then summer sausage. I started worrying.

Then, they came for the pet food.

I remember the sinking feeling, hearing that dogs and cats had died eating contaminated food. Then the flash of guilt—had we poisoned our dogs? I remember hearing the name of the manufacturer, my wife searching the web frantically for
a catalogue of its products, the stab of fear when we found the name of the food our own dogs eat. Then the wave of relief—it was only canned food; our dogs eat dry. I began investigating more. One of the things I learned was that the Food
and Drug Administration hasn't been able to confirm "with 100 percent certainty" that the offending agent didn't go into human food. Then it neglected to reveal the name of the tainted product's U.S. distributor.http://commonsense.ourfuture.org/e_coli_conservatives