French Vanilla Iced Coffee

This morning I saw a news report that really alarmed me.

Restaurant Lemons Tested Positive for Fecal Matter and E-Coli
‘GMA’ Uncovered Germy Garnishes at Some Large Restaurant Chains
By ELISABETH LEAMY and VANESSA WEBER
June 12, 2008

It may be tempting to take a twist of lemon along with a refreshing summer drink. But beware because that splash of citrus could have bacteria that may make you sick.

Lab tests reveal citrus slices contaminated with bacteria at some restaurants.

“Good Morning America” tested lemon wedges from six popular family restaurants and what they found was more frightening than refreshing. At four restaurants, “GMA” found the lemons were contaminated with fecal matter, including one sample that contaminated with E. coli.

To put the lemons to the “GMA” test, we visited three sets of chain restaurants: Applebee’s, TGI Fridays, and Chili’s. All six of the causal dining restaurants were in New Jersey.

After swabbing each lemon we were served, the samples were sent to a microbiology lab at New York University’s Medical Center.

We found yeast and harmless bacteria that are commonly found on fruits and in our environment. But four of the samples were contaminated with dangerous bacteria.

“A small risk, but a risk nevertheless by ingesting byproducts of these lemons,” Philip Tierno, director of the clinical microbiology at NYU.

The fecal matter was found at both of the Applebee’s and TGI Friday’s restaurants. The E. coli was found at the Applebee’s in Clifton, N.J. At Chili’s, we found no evidence of fecal matter or E. coli at either restaurant.

But that’s not all. At half of the restaurants we caught workers grabbing lemons with their bare hands. New Jersey’s health code insists that workers wear gloves or use tongs.

“I see that people have no concern of where they put their fingers,” said Tierno. “They’ll take things with their bare hands rather than gloving up and distributing the food stuff as they should.”

Restaurants Respond

Representatives from TGI Fridays and Applebee’s tell “GMA” they take health and safety very seriously.

TGI Fridays told “GMA” in a statement: “As we do with all matters of safety and health in our restaurants, we took this very seriously. We immediately stopped utilizing lemons at all of our restaurants until we could investigate this matter further and review our procedures to ensure this was an isolated issue.

“We’ve taken quick, thorough and appropriate measures to rectify this situation. We have very high health and safety standards, including extensive food safety training for all team members. The health and safety of our guests and team members is our top priority.”

And Applebee’s said in a statement: “Applebee’s takes these findings very seriously as the health and safety of our guests are top priorities. We believe these are isolated incidents and not reflective across the system in our company or franchise restaurants. Nonetheless we have reinforced our processes for produce washing, washing of all our cooking utensils and silverware and employee hygiene in all our restaurants.”

Not the First Time

In a study released last year, Anne LaGrange Loving, a New Jersey microbiologist, tested lemons at 21 restaurants. She found disease-causing bacteria on two-thirds of all lemons, including fecal bacteria.

People need to be aware of the kind of bacteria on lemons, Loving said in a HealthInspections.com report.

“It was like they had dipped it in raw meat or something,” Loving, a science professor at Passaic County Community College said. “It was gross.”

What You Can Do

The best advice is to squeeze the lemon juice into your drink and put the whole lemon aside, instead of putting the lemon in your drink.

Experts told “GMA” that a lemon’s acidity will not kill bacteria. Hard alcoholic drinks, like a martini, can kill bacteria, but beer’s lower alcohol content will not.

In New York, employees at Peter’s restaurant cut lemons with gloves and distribute the wedges with little spears, mindful of all that workers can come in contact with during a shift, including handling filthy money.

Looking for safety protocols like those may be the best practice the next time you order a lemon with your favorite drink.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Consumer/story?id=5048483&page=1

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JACKSON, Miss. - A state lawmaker wants to ban restaurants from serving food to obese customers — but please, don’t be offended. He says he never even expected his plan to become law.

“I was trying to shed a little light on the number one problem in Mississippi,” said Republican Rep. John Read of Gautier, who acknowledges that at 5-foot-11 and 230 pounds, he’d probably have a tough time under his own bill.

More than 30 percent of adults in Mississippi are considered it obese, according to a 2007 study by the Trust for America’s Health, a research group that focuses on disease prevention.

The state House Public Health Committee chairman, Democrat Steve Holland of Plantersville, said he is going to “shred” the bill.

“It is too oppressive for government to require a restaurant owner to police another human being from their own indiscretions,” Holland said Monday.

The bill had no specifics about how obesity would be defined, or how restaurants were supposed to determine if a customer was obese.

Al Stamps, who owns a restaurant in Jackson, said it is “absurd” for the state to consider telling him which customers he can’t serve. He and his wife, Kim, do a bustling lunch business at Cool Al’s, which serves big burgers — beef or veggie — and specialty foods like “Sassy Momma Sweet Potato Fries.”

“There is a better way to deal with health issues than to impose those kind of regulations,” Al Stamps said. “I’m sorry — you can’t do it by treating adults like children and telling them what they can and cannot eat.”

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Have you noticed that coupon clipping isn’t quite the same? I admit I don’t bother with coupons anymore, but used to do it quite frequently. Now you’ll notice that coupons say “buy 3, save 50 cents” or “buy 6 and save $1.00″. Years ago it was buy 1, save money! All of a sudden now coupons are for multiple items, have you noticed that?

And, what’s with the “DO NOT DOUBLE” on coupons issued by the manufacturer? The store pays the extra cost, not the manufacturer, so why do they care and disallow the store from paying double on a coupon???

Today I saw a coupon for bags of walnuts, the brand I use. Generally they are $6.99 at my local supermarket but if I go to Target, they are $4.75. Obviously I buy them when I am at Target. The coupon? Buy 3 bags and save $1.00. Uhm, I don’t think so … 3 lbs. of walnuts is waaaaaaaaaaay too many to buy. Plus, it’s just a buck. 33 cents a bag.

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I’m a huge fan of self checkouts at supermarkets. If they don’t have them in your area, let me explain. Basically you go to the checkout counter and scan your items yourself, and bag them yourself. You put your money into the self-checkout machine and it can give you change, too. I like it because it’s often quicker than dealing with clerks who love to chat with co-workers but mostly as I can bag my own groceries.

One of our supermarket chains, Stop and Shop, has a clerk who hangs around at the 4-5 self-checkout stations, helping when people need it, bagging if they have nothing else to do, etc. Shaw’s Supermarket, another chain, doesn’t have one specific person for this job. They have a front end person whose job is to supervise all the registers/checkouts and that includes helping people who need it.

Of course, people who haven’t a clue use these things. They don’t know how to find the 4-digit produce code on their produce, they don’t know where to find the scanner code, they don’t bag when you’re supposed to. And, these machines aren’t reliable as they often yell at you, “item removed from bagging area” and if you put the item back, “please remove item from bagging area.” MAKE UP YOUR MIND.

The worst has to be when you’re in a rush and don’t pay attention and push the Spanish button instead of English. All of a sudden this machine spits out Spanish at you and you can’t make it stop. Sorry, I’m in America, I speak our language. But, I digress.

Today, Stop and Shop showed me a new way to check out, but it’s so much more than that. When you walk into the store, you scan your shopper card. A button now flashes and a little gizmo is yours. The idea is you pick up the gizmo, plastic and paper bags, and as you shop, you scan the item then and there and bag it as well. When done, you simply take your gizmo to the self checkout, scan in your gizmo, and pay and leave. Simple, huh?

Aren’t I taking a job away from someone this way? What if it scans in the wrong price? Now I have to try to find someone who works for the store to delete it from my gizmo and put in the right price.

They also explain that they have the right to ‘audit‘ your groceries at any time they wish … in case you ‘forget’ to scan an item and bag it and try to leave the store.

I know at the large Wal-Mart Superstore, they did away with self checkouts. I asked why and they told me due to theft. People would scan in all their items at the register, bag them, and walk out the door, without paying! And, I’m told, at local supermarkets they do the same thing.

Look, I love to bag my own items, but if you expect me to start scanning them as I shop, bagging as I shop …. Uhm, why don’t you offer me lower prices if I’m doing my own bagging and scanning? You’re obviously saving money on the cost of an employee, so why not pass the savings on to me?

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I think if you did, you’d never eat at a restaurant again!

I went to a local steakhouse to buy some salad dressing. Sound odd? Well, I don’t like the bottled dressings you get at the grocery store and the homemade never comes out quite right. I ate at this particular steakhouse once and their Italian salad dressing was really good, and they told me it was homemade. I took some home and now I buy it all the time. It’s much more expensive than store bought but well worth the extra cost.

So, I have to wait a while as they package it up for me, so I view the open kitchen. First a chef took a steak out of a refrigerator, then sprinkled it HEAVILY with whatever type of seasoning they use on their steaks, but one would assume it contained a healthy dose of sodium. Then he salted the other side … and then took a brush full of oil, brushed it on the grill, and slapped on the steak. Over the next few minutes he poked and prodded the piece of meat rather than just letting it cook.

He turned it several times, then put it on the open flame grill. He moved it around a bit, poked it with a fork (NEVER DO THAT TO MEAT!) and then finally put it on a plate.

So, you have a greasy salty heavily seasoned piece of steak that should have been unmolested, but instead was ruined.

Then I watched them making rolls, putting the dough into a massive mixer, then kneading the dough. A pan came out of a proofer and were brushed with oil/butter and put into the oven. A pan was removed from the oven and again, painted with oil/butter.

I would say that meal, sans veggie, has more fat in one meal than I eat in several days!

I C K!!!

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Today, when at the grocery store, I saw a display of 16 ounce bottles of Pepsi. They were being sold individually, so I went up closer to check them out. These were not regular bottles of Pepsi, though. Oh, no, this was Pepsi Jazz, and diet Pepsi Jazz at that.

I guess they thought they had to “jazz up” the taste of Pepsi. So, I bought a bottle of Diet Pepsi Jazz Black Cherry French Vanilla, Diet Pepsi Jazz Strawberries & Cream and Diet Pepsi Jazz Caramel Creme.

The caramel cream was my least favorite, as it didn’t have a strong taste of caramel or cream. The black cherry French vanilla was too busy for me, but the strawberries and cream was really good. There was a slight taste of strawberry without overpowering the taste of Pepsi.

I found out there are many, many, MANY other flavors of regular and diet Pepsi. There is: Pepsi Lime, Diet Pepsi Lime, Pepsi Twist
Diet Pepsi Twist, Wild Cherry Pepsi, Pepsi Vanilla, Diet Pepsi Vanilla and Pepsi One.

When I was a kid, we had Coke, Pepsi and RC Cola. If you wanted diet soda, you had Tab or Fresca. That was it. Then along came Diet Rite Cola. Life was simple. You wanted a drink, you drank a little soda and they all seemingly tasted the same. Then the cola wars started.

If you were sick, you were given ginger ale. Plain old ginger ale. Have you shopped for it lately? Raspberry flavored, grape flavored, orange flavored and cranberry flavored ginger ale.

Why do we have to continually flavor things? Wasn’t life simpler when things were just, well, plain?

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Yes, it’s a scam - they charge us for things we don’t get, and we let them get away with it.

You go to a restaurant and order a chicken sandwich, and it comes with bacon and cheese. So, you say no cheese — do they give you any money off for not having cheese? If it came without cheese and I asked for it, you know they’d charge me.

Ever order a burger with extra tomato and they charge you half a buck? So why don’t they take off money if you ask for your sandwich with no tomato?

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They now want to ban all restaurants from using oil with trans fat because it’s so dangerous to your health.

Some restaurants say no, it will change the price of the oil they buy from $10 to $35 and they can’t afford it. Sports bars will be hit hardest as all their appetizers appear to be fried.

I’m waffling on this. When I buy food products for my house, I’m careful what I buy. When I eat out, I try to be careful, but you don’t know how much salt they use or what types of oil.

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So, I’m watching TV the other night and on comes a commercial. I ignore most of them, but I heard “fried macaroni and cheese” and thought I was hearing wrong. Nope. It was a commercial for TGI Fridays. Not only that, they now have “CRISPY GREEN BEAN FRIES” — Crunchy and crisp battered green beans with a cool creamy Cucumber-Wasabi Ranch dip.”

Now, fried macaroni cheese is a scoopful of elbow macaroni, smothered in fake Velveeta cheese, then covered with batter and deep fried.

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We keep reading how our society is so much more obese these days than when I grew up. They often wonder why and blame it on video games.

I’ll go a step further and blame it on fast food. Today I saw a commercial for a chain pizza restaurant touting some sort of double cheese special. Not only does the pizza have more cheese than it should, you get free bread sticks or free mozzarella sticks if you buy a few pizzas. Jeez, why not a free angioplasty for dessert, too?

Let’s see, high carbohydrate pizza with extra cheese, making it extremely high in fat, especially if you get it with meat on it. Then they offer “free” bread sticks which are nothing more than pieces of fried dough, which is nothing more than fatty carbohydrates. Or, you can have mozzarella sticks, which are fried cheese. Yes, fried fat.

The commercials are marketed toward kids, of course.

How about vending machines in schools? I heard about those and was shocked. What the heck are those needed for? Either you eat the lunch the school provides or bring your own. Why are they offering potato chips, candy bars, high sugar sodas, etc.?

I ate school lunch a few times but it was so disgusting I stopped. I’d bring my own lunch, but my mom always made embarassing lunches. Egg salad in a hot dog bun. Fish cakes. We had a choice of milk. Regular milk, that was it. No skim milk but no chocolate milk either, as they offer today.

And, when we came home from school, we went outside to play. Oh sure, sometimes I’d watch TV after school, though I was never a soap opera watcher. I’d watch Mike Douglas or Merv Griffin. I still remember seeing the Village People in 1977! After supper we’d go out and play for a bit, maybe play kickball, walk around, etc. We didn’t sit on our butts and play video games. And, we had no computers either.

There were also very few fast food restaurants around back then. I remember a place called Howdy Beef Burgers, which was a generic equivalent of McDonald’s or Burger King I guess. I remember going there a few times, a cheeseburger was 25 cents and fries were a dime! A family of 3 could literally eat for a couple of dollars.

We didn’t have pizza restaurants like they do now. I remember the first Domino’s Pizza that came into this in the early 90’s. Mom and I ordered a pizza for delivery. It wasn’t there in 30 minutes so it was $3 off the price! It was the first pizza place in the area. Nowadays they’re on every block, right? I only had that pizza one time and we didn’t like it.

Ever walk through the supermarket and look how products are marketed toward kids? All the sugary cereals are at eye level for kids. Reading the ingredients in those cereals makes me ill. SO many carbs, so much sugar, so much garbage. When we were kids they had what, 12 cereals at the most? Now there must be 100 or more and all have some sort of gimmick of sugary this or that and, of course, that free prize, making it a must have for every kid

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