Here we go again. The Seattle Times reported this morning that two more E coli outbreaks are being traced to “prepackaged iceberg lettuce from California.” This time the outbreaks were in the Midwest and on the East Coast, but they traced it back to—yup, the Salinas Valley. It looks like the excess sewage saturating the earth from a cattle farm may have contaminated a field of lettuce, and shared equipment exacerbated the situation once again.
With my resolution to buy heads of lettuce rather than pre-bagged salads, I’ve hit a snag. We’re snowed in, and if we want fresh food, we have to walk out to get it. Trader Joe’s is a reasonable two miles away, so we went there (the only other option is Uwajimaya, an Asian supermarket, but they just tilt their heads and look at you funny when you ask if they have local or organic anything). But Trader Joe’s only sells prepackaged produce. Okay, so they now sell loose bananas and apples, but everything else is hermetically sealed against nuclear holocaust.
I managed to find organic romaine hearts, so even though they’re bagged, they still resemble a head of lettuce. And no matter, either, since we ended up popping even more champagne corks at the neighbors this evening, only noshing to keep the bubbly from going straight to our heads, rather than really eating.
We did put a bowl of spaghetti into the boys before we trundled them off to bed. (Are there parents out there without a microwave? How do they do it?) We'll have salad in a bag tomorrow, or until I can get out to the coop for real veggies.
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