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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Sometimes I wonder about the media and what they do. When actor Heath Ledger died, they milked everything they could out of it. I liked Heath Ledger, and only saw him in one movie, Brokeback Mountain, but he nailed that character perfectly and really impessed me.

The day he died the media was in a frenzy, camped out at his apartment, even reporting inaccuracies in their rush to be the first to report something. The cameras trained on people as they walked by, gauging their grief, was nuts.

I thought it was horrible for everyone to be speculating on what happened, the hows and whys and whos about it.

They then followed his ex-fiance and mother of his child, Michelle Williams, to train the camera on her face and gauge her facial expressions as she walked. Sheesh, let her grieve in peace.

His parents found out he died when they heard it on the radio. I don’t blame the media for that, I blame the police department for not notifying the family immediately.

I felt bad for people who had a microphone shoved into their face while a reporter asked how they felt that he died.

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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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Recently in Massachusetts a 13-year old boy was hit by a car and was killed. He was walking down the road at 1 am with some friends, apparently having snuck out of the house without permission. A man was driving down the road and struck him and drove off, thinking he hit a mailbox he claimed.

The next morning he turned himself in. He claimed he was doing a text message and didn’t see the boy he hit before he hit him.

So, now they want to ban text messaging while driving. Some states make it illegal to use a cell phone unless it’s hands free when driving. One state made it illegal for you to smoke in your car if you were driving with your children.

Let’s legislate human behavior, shall we?

First of all, you can smoke around your kids 24/7 but if you go in the car and smoke, it’s not allowed? Second-hand smoke is dangerous. But, you can take your kids to a place where others are smoking and it’s ok?

Why is it ok for an adult to drink in the house with kids? Why not make that illegal, too? After all, an adult could do something stupid with kids in the house, right?

Text messaging while driving is just stupid. I rarely even use my cell phone when driving. If I get the urge to make a phone call, I pull into the nearest parking lot. If my phone rings and the conversation will be more than a few minutes, I do the same. Of course, one day 3 years ago I was driving through the town and pulled into a parking lot, not paying much attention to what type of establishment it was. A few weeks later a couple of people mentioned they saw me at a bar in the middle of an afternoon. I guess a redhead in a 1966 Mustang is easy to spot. So, I had to explain that no, I wasn’t in the bar, no, I don’t drink, but I had to make a phone call.

I see more people eating in their cars than talking on cell phones. Let’s make it illegal to eat in the car, shall we? After all, you take your eyes off the road to dip your French fry into the ketchup, take your eyes off the road to inhale the sodium and fat-laden burger or to triple-dip your oversalted chicken.

You can’t legislate human behavior. People are always going to do something stupid.

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Now, what bothers me about this is she was not a PORN star. She did have an adult website, and she did appear nude, but did not do any hardcore sex. When girls pose on Internet sites, they are “porn stars” yet when they post nude in Playboy, they are revered as sexy women who chose to pose nude. Why the double standard?

RIP, Zoey Zane.

Autopsy slated for secret porn star

EL DORADO, Kan. - The search for a missing college student who led a secret life as an Internet porn performer turned into a homicide case after her body was apparently found.

Authorities said the preliminary physical description of the body found Thursday about 50 miles east of El Dorado matches that of Emily Sander, who was last seen leaving a bar here a week ago with a man who stayed in a motel room where police found large quantities of blood. An autopsy was planned for Friday.

Investigators refused to give details about the state of the body or how it was found. Police Chief Tom Boren said the cause of death was not yet known.

Sander’s case drew wide attention after it was revealed that she appeared on a popular adult Web site under the name Zoey Zane. In some photographs, she appears merely scantily clad in lingerie or cowgirl outfits. Other pictures, some of which require viewers to pay for, are more explicit, showing her nude, fondling herself and posing with other women.

The 18-year-old Butler Community College student was last seen Nov. 23 with Israel Mireles, 24. Authorities are looking for him and his 16-year-old pregnant girlfriend.

The rental car the pair were driving was found abandoned Tuesday in Vernon, Texas, where Mireles has relatives.

“We got no information from them at all and very little cooperation,” Boren said of Mireles’ family.

The search for Sander gripped this small community, and the apparent discovery of her body left only memories to comfort her friends and family.

“She was probably the most independent girl I know,” said Nikki Watson, a close friend. “She was so anxious to get out on her own and make something of herself. She was ready to take on life.”

Former boyfriend Michael McAllister, 20, said Sander moved in with him when she was 17.

“It was the best time of my life, and I hope it was the same for her,” McAllister said.

He helped her finish high school, and she encouraged him in college. They bought pink and white Denver Broncos jerseys for themselves and their dog, Zan, that they wore on game days. She loved to dance to hip-hop music.

“She wanted to choreograph music videos. That is the only reason she did the Internet thing — to get a little exposure,” McAllister said.

They broke up in September after she started posing for nude photos, he said.

Watson said the attention over Sander’s Web site has upset her friends.

“She never referred to it as her porn site,” she said. “It was just her Web site. She didn’t make it into this big thing.”

Police insisted that Sander’s Internet activity had no connection to her disappearance. “The issue of the Internet and the spinoff of that has been literally crippling our investigation,” Boren said.

The body was found as searchers on foot and all-terrain vehicles were checking the tall grass along each side of Highway 54 as they traced the route Mireles may have taken Saturday on the way to Baxter Springs to pick up his girlfriend.

Sander’s grandmother, Shirley Sander, said the discovery of a body would “very definitely” bring closure to the family.

“We had to know one way or another,” she said in a telephone interview.

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Didn’t realize it had been SO long since I’ve written in this blog. Well that is about to change!

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Do you agree with Don Imus being fired for calling the Rutgers girls basketball team “nappy headed hos?”

Is this a freedom of speech issue?

I admit, I’m torn. I believe in freedom of speech but I think there should be limits. People are worried our “young people” will hear what he said and it will affect them. Uhh, they hear a lot worse in today’s rap lyrics. All the women are bitches and hos and you’re told to “smack them up” and treat them like garbage.

One of the people who campaigned to get Don Imus fired is Jesse Jackson, who is infamous for calling Jews “hymies” and New York City as “hymietown” in a 1984 interview. Now, granted, this was a while back, but still … isn’t he just as bad?

Shock radio hires shock jocks for one reason — TO SHOCK YOU. Calling black women “nappy headed hos” is part of his job, I guess. He’s supposed to say things to cause controversy.

But, how far is too far?

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So, this morning I’m watching one of the morning talk shows and my local news station interrupts with a breaking news story.

To paraphrase: “There has been a shooting in the parking lot at the Barnstable Courthouse. That’s all the details we have and we’ll bring you more news as we find it out.”

Uh, excuse me?? WHY? You gave NO information. If I had a relative working in the courthouse, or someone who was driving by that area, etc., I’m be a nervous wreck at that point.

They interrupt to give you a half-assed news story lacking any depth, so they can say, “we brought it to you first.” Hoo ha. Yippee.

They did it weeks ago when they interrupted to say there had been a shooting at a school, but had no more details. If I were a parent in that school district, a relative of a teachers, etc, I’d have been going bonkers.

Must the media ignore human emotions for ratings? What happened to what I learned about journalism in school — WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN AND WHY.

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Yes, it’s very sad that she died. But, why is every media outlet covering this story 24/7 without a break? She was a girl from a small town who wanted to be famous, and did whatever she could to get there, from modeling jeans, posing in Playboy, married a billionaire, using drugs, losing weight, etc.

Her life wasn’t charmed. A marriage at 16 led to the birth of a son who died 5 months ago, barely 21 years old, from a drug overdose. She married a man in his late 80’s, a billionaire, and got 400+ million dollars when he died, lost it due to a court case by her stepson, then got it back. She seemingly found love with her attorney, gave birth to a daughter and 3 days later her son died. Then 3 people claimed to be the father of her child, and now she’s dead, the young daughter without a mother or known father at this time.

Ok, so she was a young girl who died tragically, though at this point her cause of death is unknown, but prescription drugs were found in her hotel room where she died.

But WHY is so much attention given to her? Other people have passed on without much fanfare or just a passing mention.

Are we so gossip-hungry that an entire nation is poised on the edge of their seats to find out if a former model, part-time actress and known publicity seeker died from a drug overdose?

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NEW BEDFORD — Former New Bedford High School basketball star Brian E. Rudolph will receive no jail time for stabbing another teen in the back last April, a court decision that has angered police who investigated the case.

Mr. Rudolph, 18, a New Bedford basketball star who at the time of the stabbing had a full basketball scholarship waiting for him at Providence College, received three years of probation and 300 hours of community service yesterday for his part in a stabbing last April in Acushnet.”

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