Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

After roe, women are no longer free.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

The words do not have to be perfect.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Infrastructure week. at last.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

T R E 4 5 O N

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / An Open Letter to the Makers of Qrunch Quinoa Burgers

An Open Letter to the Makers of Qrunch Quinoa Burgers

by | 159 Comments

This post is in: , ,

Dear Makers of Qrunch Quinoa Burgers:

I am writing to express my dissatisfaction with the product heating instructions your company provides on Qrunch Quinoa Burgers packaging and to beg you to alter it immediately. I attempted to enjoy a Qrunch Quinoa Burger for lunch a short while ago, and to describe the ensuing mess as a clusterfuck would be a disservice to both clusters and fucks.

When I first retrieved my package of Qrunch Quinoa Burgers from the freezer and consulted the instructions, I was very happy to see that it was possible to heat the patties in a toaster because I dislike the texture of microwaved food and was in too much of a hurry to use a skillet:

qq_instructions

It never occurred to me that the photo of the toasted Qrunch Quinoa Burgers that illustrates your instructions was misleading. But it’s a filthy lie, employing as it does a half-scale replica of an actual toaster to lull overly credulous consumers into thinking they can safely toast their patties.

See how the patties in the picture extend well above the top of the toaster slot? In reality, Qrunch Quinoa Burgers disappear into the slot completely, coming to rest about an inch BELOW the top of the slot — even before the toast-lowering lever is engaged.

No matter, I thought, watching my patty disappear into the bowels of my toaster. I’ll just unplug the toaster after the toasting operation is complete, use a fork to retrieve my patty, and before you can say “Jack Robinson,” I’ll be enjoying my Qrunch Quinoa Burger.

Alas, I was entirely too optimistic! Here is what happened when I tried to retrieve my patty:

toaster_one

And then it got even worse, with the patty completely disintegrating in response to my frantic attempts to extract it from the toaster. Finally I had to turn the toaster over onto its side to leverage gravity. The result was an eviscerated patty adulterated by random toaster shakings. Worse yet, IT WAS STILL COLD, even though I’d followed the instructions and run two cycles:

toaster_two

I’m not blaming you for the fact that it has clearly been too long since I’ve cleaned my toaster. I’m not even expecting an apology or recompense. I’m just begging you, in the name of corporate good citizenship, to change the heating instructions copy on your packages and spare other consumers the pain, disillusionment and toaster wreckage I’ve suffered today.

You can either remove the toaster suggestion completely or alter it to alert consumers that they’ll need to use a special miniature Qrunch Quinoa Burger toaster and THREE heating cycles. I appreciate your prompt attention to this matter.

Sincerely, etc.

[X-posted at Rumproast]

Reader Interactions

159Comments

  1. 1.

    eastriver

    How much did the burger cost? How much did the toaster cost?

    Now, which of the two should you pay attention to, and be more protective of?

    Please and thank you.

  3. 3.

    ? Martin

    Broccoli wasn’t good enough. Obama’s thugs are now coming for our donuts.

    In what’s being called a novel approach to the typical employee wellness program, Kaiser Permanente and its 29 employee unions are offering cash bonuses to workers who – as a group – collectively lose weight, lower their blood pressure, cut their cholesterol and stop smoking.

    The bonuses – up to $500 a year – will be doled out based on the improved health of all participants in a particular region, rather than that of any individual.

  7. 7.

    Jane2

    Quinoa anything never tastes or looks like the package, and that fact is sufficient to keep me pro-gluten.

  12. 12.

    beltane

    Wait, I thought it was wrong to buy quinoa because wealthy North Americans were driving up the cost of the grain for the indigenous people who have subsisted on it for centuries. Maybe these Andean villagers were sending you a not-too-subtle message.

  13. 13.

    elmo

    Nothing made of quinoa can be called a “burger.”
    Nothing called a burger can be made of quinoa.
    This is very simple, and cannot be emphasized enough.
    Quinoa =! burger.
    Burger =! quinoa.

    Here endeth the lesson.

  14. 14.

    ? Martin

    @geg6: No, it’s not the quinoa burger that’s the travesty here, but the word ‘Qrunch’. We’re raising a generation of barefoot unvaccinated children that not only won’t be able to spell but will be unclear on the english language convention for the use of the letter Q. They fucking ruining Scrabble, for fucks sake!

  22. 22.

    Elizabelle

    I wonder if you could wrap the patties in foil and toast them 3 times. Then dump them out of the toaster.

    Did your chickens suggest you turn to quinoa burgers?

    Much like the spokescows of Chik Filet?

  23. 23.

    schrodinger's cat

    I have solution for the oven/microwave reheating conundrum. You need to thaw the stuff from the freezer using the defrost setting on the microwave and then use either the stove top or toaster oven to finish the cooking. Faster than reheating in the oven and better texture than just reheating in the microwave. I have used this technique on veggie burgers and chicken burgers from TJ with great success.

  26. 26.

    AnneW

    Nope, I’ll defend Betty Cracker here: the instructions clearly say that you can heat them in a toaster, OR you can use an oven or toaster oven.

    If the makers weren’t lying liars, I wouldn’t mind trying these since I actually do like the taste of quinoa.

  27. 27.

    Jamey

    First World problems with a processed burger patty made from a developing world staple crop. Sorry, the targets for ridicule here are just too numerous. If I jump to light speed, I may be blown apart.

  30. 30.

    The Other Chuck

    I like Quinoa. I like Burgers. I even like Boca Burgers. Yet I am not sold on the idea of Quinoa Burgers. That is all.

  31. 31.

    WereBear

    @? Martin: In what’s being called a novel approach to the typical employee wellness program, Kaiser Permanente and its 29 employee unions are offering cash bonuses to workers who – as a group – collectively lose weight, lower their blood pressure, cut their cholesterol and stop smoking.

    I hate this crap: not that lowering blood pressure and quitting smoking aren’t good things, because they certainly are. When I lost weight I also lowered my blood pressure.

    But my cholesterol went UP. Though my triglycerides went DOWN. And they are the inflammatory markers that actually lead to heart disease.

    So they won’t give ME a bonus… for taking care of my health, In fact, they probably would want me to take a statin, and I’d refuse, because:

    Low cholesterol is associated with higher risk of death in women

  33. 33.

    Roger Moore

    @beltane:

    The fact that it is much more expensive than millet does not improve the taste.

    Which just proves that you’re an unamerican DFH. Real Americans(TM) know that expensive things are inherently better than cheap ones.

  35. 35.

    Trollhattan

    @? Martin:

    Saw that in today’s paper. I think it’s a wonderful opportunity for in-shape folks and meth addicts to publicly nag the overly enhanced to stop shoveling snacks into their yaps because if they don’t IT’S GOING TO COST EVERYBODY ACTUAL CASH MONEY.

    I think it’s going to go splendidly.

  36. 36.

    Trollhattan

    Every time I see quinoa I think “mmm, fingernail clippings.”

    Anyway, I think Bolivia’s running out so that’s one fad that has a use-by date.

  38. 38.

    Left Coast Tom

    @schrodinger’s cat: The instructions clearly say “toaster oven or oven”. Unfortunately, the illustrator doesn’t seem to know what a “toaster oven” is.

    So Betty was following pictures but not written instructions.

    Edit: nevermind…the instructions first say “toaster”, then they say (repeatedly) “toaster oven”.

  39. 39.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    Wait, I thought it was wrong to buy quinoa because wealthy North Americans were driving up the cost of the grain for the indigenous people who have subsisted on it for centuries.

    @beltane: This is actually true. I like the stuff but the trade is not doing the people who’ve been living on it for centuries any good. Fact is, it’s doing them a hell of a lot of harm. There’s got to be some other hi-falutin’ expensive foodie shit out there you can eat that doesn’t cause actual harm to real people.

    Plus, burgers are made of meat. Period.

  41. 41.

    Roger Moore

    @CONGRATULATIONS!:

    There’s got to be some other hi-falutin’ expensive foodie shit out there you can eat that doesn’t cause actual harm to real people.

    Plus, burgers are made of meat. Period.

    So get an organic, free-range beef burger. Free-range beef isn’t that much more expensive than feedlot beef, but it actually is a better choice.

  42. 42.

    Tommy

    I used to work for an ad agency that did work for a large food company. I went to a number of photoshoots. I wrongly assume they’d you know, cook their food. Then take pictures of it.

    Nope.

    We “modeled” the food out of all kinds of things for those product shots. Things you would never eat.

    I mean when was the last time you got a Big Mac that looked like the Big Mac in the commercial?

  45. 45.

    gene108

    @? Martin:

    children that not only won’t be able to spell

    Thanks to the ubiquitous use of spell checkers on so many of our computerized applications, and since most writing of any sort is now done on a computerized device, spelling is overrated now, says someone who has developed a spell checker dependency and forgotten how to spell many words.

  48. 48.

    raven

    I nuke a boca burger for lunch quite a bit. The burgers at (gasp) Sam’s are twice as big as the regular ones in the store.

  54. 54.

    Roger Moore

    @Tommy:

    I mean when was the last time you got a Big Mac that looked like the Big Mac in the commercial?

    Never. OTOH, the stuff in Carl’s Jr. commercials is actually reasonably close to the stuff you get served. The stuff you get has been mashed a bit more than the stuff in the ads, and I assume they put more stuff on the stuff in the ads so it looks more appealing, but it looks as if it’s made of the same stuff. Of course, Carl’s Jr. also has the radical approach of showing people eating their food in the ads, so they may want to make sure the stuff they’re showing is actually edible.

  56. 56.

    Ramalama

    @Amir Khalid: Quinoa is a little sprouty when you boil it in water and has a slight nutty taste. It’s a grain that’s proteiny rather than carbohydratey,

    I eat it when I get tired of rice – I make spicy black beans and eat it for about a month until I move on to eating other stuff. Before everyone gets all pointy fingery at me I am neither a veggie nor a hippie nor a liberatarian (not that there’s anything wrong with that). I mean, I like venison and lamb. I’ve had horse in a stew (hey, Quebec, ok?), which is sacrilegious since I was born in the year of the horse *and* bonus – I am deathly allergic to horses. I have a ferrier in the family and so learned young the hard way. But eating it didn’t bring out the usual symptoms.

    And yeah I know about the 1st world making quinoa a darling, so haven’t bought it or eaten it in some time now.

    My next trend will probably take me to the potato chip aisle where I can stay for a spell.

  57. 57.

    ruemara

    @Amir Khalid: I love it. It’s a very tasty grain, delicious with butter and herbs (but what isn’t) and there’s fantastic quinoa loaves you can make that will hold up better than anything called “Qunch”.

  59. 59.

    Roger Moore

    @Ramalama:

    It’s a grain that’s proteiny rather than carbohydratey,

    Strictly speaking, it’s a pseudograin like buckwheat or amaranth rather than a true grain. It comes from a chenopod rather than a grass.

  60. 60.

    Amir Khalid

    @gene108:
    Tsk, tsk. A spellchecker catches only spelling mistakes. It cannot catch a wrongly chosen word that is correctly spelled. You will never not need to know how to spell.

  62. 62.

    different-church-lady

    See, now I like this: we can run the gamut from bitching about consumer food that gets stuck in consumer appliances, to bitching about large scale international bombing!

    (I figured that was a more clever-castic comment than saying “first world problems” yet again….)

  67. 67.

    elmo

    @Roger Moore:

    That is exactly the kind of stuff I love to know about. Like tea actually not having caffeine in it, but rather a different xanthene having roughly the same effect.
    Thank you.

  71. 71.

    MattF

    If you let quinoa be quinoa, it’s pretty good. I take a 50/50 mixture of quinoa and barley, cook it in my rice cooker like brown rice. Then top the cooked quinoa/barley mixture with a couple of fried eggs and some bacon on the side. A good combination of good-for-you and bad-for-you; moderation in all things.

  73. 73.

    Bobby Thomson

    @beltane:

    Wait, I thought it was wrong to buy quinoa because wealthy North Americans were driving up the cost of the grain for the indigenous people who have subsisted on it for centuries.

    That argument makes no sense to me. To get the pedantry out of the way, it’s a seed, not a grain.

    Would you rather North Americans drove up the cost of beef so that more rain forest is converted to cattle grazing, which requires more acreage and is worse for the environment?

    Is there some reason to think South American countries improving their trade balances will be bad for their economies?

    Why don’t we want South American farmers to make more profit? The cash they have gotten has allowed them to diversify their diets and eat vegetables. Raising the price of South American goods is good for South Americans.

    There’s no reason quinoa has to be grown in Bolivia. It’s just one of the few things that will grow there.

  74. 74.

    Roger Moore

    @elmo:

    Like tea actually not having caffeine in it, but rather a different xanthene having roughly the same effect.

    Tea does have caffeine in it, more by weight than coffee beans. It has some other xanthines, too, as well as theanine, and the caffeine tends to form complexes with the polyphenols in the tea leaves. But the stimulant effect of tea is primarily from caffeine.

  75. 75.

    jacy

    I love the quinoa they serve at the Brazilian steakhouse we frequent. It’s cold in some kind of salad with vinegar and currants. I would not however, attempt to make a burger out of it. Or put it in my toaster.

  77. 77.

    cckids

    This is OT, but I gotta share it: we are moving in October. Because my daughter is a teen, she did not pack all her shit before she moved away to college. I’m upstairs packing the stuff she didn’t & decide to take down her “net” of stuffed animals (remember those?) that has hung in her room since the day before forever.

    I unhook the thing, and of course all the animals fall all over me & the floor. Along with at least 4 (FOUR) scorpions. I’m trying to keep an eye on them, but mostly am freaking out because I’m sure one is ON ME SOMEWHERE.

    Only found & killed 3. Now, not only do I feel the need to shower (preferably in some type of bug spray), I want to burn everything I’m wearing & shave my head.

    And I don’t want to pack her stuff anymore. I may fly her back for a weekend so she can do it.

  81. 81.

    Seanly

    @Roger Moore:

    I hate, hate, hate Carl’s ads. The overly big burgers & obnoxiously loud foley versions of humans pigging out disgust me. But then I get creeped out by the snapping sound many people’s jaws make when they eat – yes, I know that is probably some deep pyschological issue

    When I get an actual burger from Carl’s the buns always seem to have been sat on.

  82. 82.

    WereBear

    On the other hand, we cannot even think of putting a real hamburger in the toaster. Does this mean that this thing is actually more like a real burger?

  83. 83.

    The Dangerman

    @Seanly:

    I hate, hate, hate Carl’s ads.

    That is me and those Wendy commercials; I might dine with the redhead once as she’s kinda hot, but the she gets DQ’d quick for the obnoxiousness.

    I wonder why no one has considered a fast food place specializing in Quinoa burgers?

    /deep thoughts

  85. 85.

    eemom

    Imma just come right out and admit I don’t know wtf quinoa even is. Some kind of veggieburger thing I gather.

    Considering the advancity of my age and the infinity of my ignorance, it is just a matter of time before nothing makes any sense to me at all.

  86. 86.

    MikeJ

    @Bobby Thomson: I believe the argument is “if it ain’t bacon there must be something wrong hur hur hur.” Assholes always want to find a reason that everything others enjoy is evil.

  87. 87.

    Roger Moore

    @Seanly:

    I hate, hate, hate Carl’s ads.

    I’m not a fan of most ads, and I don’t like the smug attitude of the Carl’s Jr. ads. That said, they do actually show people eating and enjoying their food. I think it says something terrible about McDonald’s that their ads are all about families talking and joking rather than about food, which they rarely show.

  89. 89.

    ? Martin

    @Roger Moore: McDonalds stopped marketing their food decades ago. Their marketing has been almost exclusively to kids to book time with family where the kid gets to call the shots for an hour. They’re exploiting some fundamental problems in our culture.

  90. 90.

    Trollhattan

    For a Friday open thread, Haliburton gets a handslap.

    A federal judge accepted a plea agreement Thursday that calls for Halliburton to pay a $200,000 fine for destroying evidence after BP’s 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Halliburton pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge stemming from the deletion of data during a post-spill review of the cement job on BP’s blown-out Macondo well.

    The Houston-based company could have withdrawn its guilty plea if US District Judge Jane Triche Milazzo had rejected its deal with the Justice Department. Milazzo said she believes the plea agreement is reasonable and agreed with prosecutors and the company that it “adequately reflects the seriousness of the offense.”

    Halliburton also agreed to make a $55m contribution to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. The company was BP PLC’s cement contractor on the drilling rig that exploded in the Gulf in April 2010, killing 11 workers. Unlike BP and rig owner Transocean Limited, Halliburton has not been charged with a crime related to the causes of the disaster. The charge to which it agreed to plead guilty – a misdemeanor count of unauthorized destruction of evidence – involved a post-spill review of the cement job on BP’s blown-out Macondo well.
    http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/sep/19/bp-oil-spill-halliburton-pleads-guilty

    While a former employee might still get the hammer.

    A former Halliburton manager was charged Thursday with destroying evidence following BP’s 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a case that coincides with a guilty plea to a related charge by the Houston-based oilfield services company. Anthony Badalamenti, who had been the cementing technology director for Halliburton Energy Services Inc., was charged in federal court with instructing two other employees to delete data during a post-spill review of the cement job on BP’s blown-out well.

    Halliburton was BP PLC’s cement contractor on the drilling rig that exploded in the Gulf in April 2010, killing 11 workers and triggering the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history. Badalamenti, 61, of Katy, Texas, is charged in a bill of information, which typically signals that a defendant is cooperating with prosecutors. His attorney, Tai H. Park, declined to comment. Badalamenti is scheduled to be arraigned on Sept. 30.

    http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/224377151.html

  93. 93.

    Steeplejack

    @gene108:

    And the gains of spell-checking—when people deign to use it—have been largely offset by unsupervised autocorrect, so now you see prose with surreal word salad rather than just (comprehensible) typos or misspellings.

  94. 94.

    cckids

    @schrodinger’s cat: Yeah. We have them in this house (since 2008), never did before in 11+ years living here in the desert. A friend said to get a black light & look outdoors or in the attic at night to see how bad the infestation is.

    As if. The ones I see now & then are bad enough. Like I want to know more? I’d never sleep again.

  96. 96.

    Violet

    @WereBear: You quit eating gluten, right? I’m nervous about my physical because I’ve lost weight but I suspect my cholesterol has gone up. I’m sure I’m going to be pressured to take a statin drug. Not going to happen.

  97. 97.

    Betty Cracker

    @cckids: OMFG! Now I’m actually thankful that we only have giant flying cockroaches and the occasional enormous wolf spider!

    I know there are scorpions here in FL — when I was a kid, one bit me on the ass when I was on a tire swing. But I’ve never seen one in the house, let alone heard of an infestation. (shiver)

  101. 101.

    cckids

    @Betty Cracker: Creepy (and crunchy) as they are, scorpions, PLEASE, before your giant cockroaches. My sister lived there, (in Florida) and the stories she’d tell. Urg.

    She dropped an Orlando Yellow pages phone book on one once, it shrugged it off & walked away. Probably flipped her off, too. No thanks.

  102. 102.

    bemused

    @Tommy:

    Maybe it’s just me but food commercials especially from restaurants have the opposite of the intended effect on me. The food has a very unappetizing appearance and doesn’t look real to me. On occasion, I have actually felt a bit queasy so now I just don’t look.

  103. 103.

    Roger Moore

    @Amir Khalid:

    I don’t know why autocorrect exists.

    I suspect that autocomplete- which is very helpful for things like tablets that are awful to type on- is a bigger villain than autocorrect. That said, autocorrect is handy when it’s fixing common typos like “teh” and “trhee”.

  104. 104.

    Betty Cracker

    @cckids:

    Probably flipped her off, too.

    LOL, yeah, probably. Those bastards are tough. I’ve broken countless brooms trying to bludgeon them to death.

  106. 106.

    Ken

    “Finally I had to turn the toaster over onto its side to leverage gravity”

    Um, if you were trying to “leverage gravity” why on god’s great green earth would you turn it on its side rather than simply turning it upside down?

    This whole thing reminds me of the monkey’s fist in a coconut story

  107. 107.

    shelly

    “No, it’s not the quinoa burger that’s the travesty here, but the word ‘Qrunch’.”
    *******

    Oh please. How many ‘Quicky Qlean’ dry cleaners did we see growing up?

  109. 109.

    Mnemosyne

    @cckids:

    Scorpions are related to spiders. I do not like spiders or any of their relatives. Even crabs freak me out a bit, and they’re separated from spiders by several million years of evolution.

    ETA: Also, too, you should call an exterminator. They’ll know how to get rid of scorpions — my mom has one in Arizona who sprays their garage and all around the house to keep them out.

  110. 110.

    Betty Cracker

    @Ken: Have you ever turned a toaster upside down? I mean a USED toaster? Even after you’ve emptied the crumb tray (if available)? Well, I have. It disgorges about a pound of petrified toast particles. At that point, I was still trying to salvage the patty. I did end up turning the whole thing upside down over the sink, and everything but money and Jimmy Hoffa fell out.

  112. 112.

    Roger Moore

    @Betty Cracker:

    The trick is to turn the toaster upside down and get the crap out of it before putting food into it. Then you can remove the food by flipping it without the risk of covering your food with scary stuff.

  115. 115.

    Jay C

    We’ve (well, Mrs. Jay anyway, who is quite meat-shy) learned to love the quinoa burgers we get from the local upscale market here near our summer palace villa manor place here in the Scenic Berkshires: and the fracturing problem AL mentions is a definite issue: but these are [semi-?] hand made, and sold fresh, not frozen (with, like, a four-day sell-by) – we either nuke ’em for 2-3 minutes, or (carefully) grill – I’m sure the commercial stuff gives you a lot less leeway.

    But I agree with ? Martin: “Qrunch” is an atrocity…..

  117. 117.

    Trollhattan

    @bemused:

    Agreed. Since getting a hi-def teebee and HD cable, food ads ALL look revolting. Something about the old analogue smearing made them a lot more tolerable, even when they weren’t especially appealing. (Killed a lot of newscaster careers too, but that’s a different topic.)

    Special exception for any locally produced ad for an all-you-can-eat buffet. There’s no making that look good, whatsoever.

  118. 118.

    cckids

    @Mnemosyne: We’ve heard varying stories about the efficacy of exterminators with scorpions; some people swear by them, some say they just get the little f*ckers riled up.

    And, we’re renting & we are moving. Hopefully to a palm-tree free landscape, I know that they harbor hundreds of the things. The expense of a monthly visit from the bug guys has not been a part of our budget.

    We also have black widow spiders, some pretty large specimens. And (knock wood) no one in the family has ever been bit. My cats are aces at finding the scorpions, though. I’ve learned that if the three of them are sitting in a circle, intently watching something, usually it is a scorpion. They never play with them, just watch them. I think the cats are kinda skeeved out by them as well.

  119. 119.

    Trollhattan

    @cckids:

    Used to have a couple palm trees–Mexican fan palm FWIW–which were okay before they got too tall to trim the dead fronds, after which they were free to fold against the trunk and form a protective cocoon, turning the trees into Vermin Factories. Rats, squirrels, pigeons, starlings–you name it and it issued forth from those damn things. Oh yeah, once they started producing seeds I then had to pull thousands of little palms from my yard, annually. They’ve been gone half a decade and I still get hundreds of volunteers sprouting each spring. For the life of me I don’t know why they’ve not conquered the whole state.

  122. 122.

    AdamK

    Lessons:

    Do not purchase or use

    a) pop-up toasters
    b) quinoa burgers
    c) products whose names begin with Qr.

  126. 126.

    Long Tooth

    Executives at Qrunch (“Crunch With A “Q”) Burgers aren’t going to take this attack laying down, BC. Stories abound in frozen burger circles about those animals that would make your hair curl. Best tread lightly for a while.

    ‘Letter From A Birmingham Toaster’

    ‘To Have And Toast Not’

    ‘War And Toast’

    ‘Gone With The Toaster’

  127. 127.

    WereBear

    @Violet: I’m pleased that gluten free seems to be working for you.

    Good for you, turning down the statin. You know they have NO proven benefit for women. NONE. And the possibility of some very serious side effects.

  128. 128.

    The Pale Scot

    The really annoying thing about the flying roaches is how dumb they are. No comparison to the inhabitants of my NE brownstone, those guys were like KGB agents in cold war Vienna.

  129. 129.

    sacrablue

    @WereBear: Do you have any specific studies that I can cite? I was prescribed a statin a few weeks ago. I won’t have new blood test until the end of November. If there is little change in my LDL, I will want some ammo to question the doctor with.

  131. 131.

    Violet

    @WereBear: I turned it down once before when my cholesterol was high. That was before my thyroid problem was diagnosed. High cholesterol is a symptom of thyroid problems, but of course my doctor didn’t bother to link that. I had to figure it out myself.

    I haven’t yet had my annual physical, so I haven’t found out what my cholesterol is. I’m worried it is going to be high, though. And then I’ll have to turn down the statin.

  132. 132.

    Mnemosyne

    @cckids:

    Since it’s a rental, I would definitely let your landlord know what happened and it will then be their responsibility to take care of it. If nothing else, they’d be liable if a new tenant got injured.

    ETA: We apparently have lots of black widows around our office building (outside, thankfully). I’ve never seen one, but I’ve probably successfully blocked any sightings from my mind because I would FREAK THE FUCK OUT if I actually registered one.

  133. 133.

    Betty Cracker

    @The Pale Scot: Japanese beetles are even dumber. I was riding my bike a couple of years back, and one flew directly into my forehead at full speed, knocking me off the bike. (Well, causing me to involuntarily flail and fall off the bike, actually. Maybe Cole really is my secret brother!) I mean, we were outside. The beetle had an entire planetful of optional routes to avoid a collision…

  135. 135.

    MomSense

    @WereBear:

    Thank you for that link. I have high cholesterol, although the good cholesterol number is really good, and I don’t know what else I can do. I exercise, eat really well, and really shouldn’t lose weight.

    I’m going to do a little research before I talk to my doctor again.

  136. 136.

    WereBear

    @MomSense: You are more than welcome!

    My husband has CF/ME and doctors don’t know much about it. My scouring of the Internet has resulted in the only helpful treatment he’s gotten in the past 12 years, and now has uncovered a second issue (MTFHR mutation) and shows great promise for us moving forward.

    So I’m glad that my obsessive surfing can help others, too.

  138. 138.

    Violet

    @WereBear: I think MTFHR is a bigger issue than anyone knows. It plays a part in a lot of things, but they all seem to be somewhat isolated from each other–by which I mean the doctors don’t really talk to each other because the conditions aren’t related. I wonder if it’s why supplementing B vitamins is recommended for so many people.

  142. 142.

    Gravenstone

    For the baseball folks here, seems there was a bit of a kerfluffe last night when some of the Dodgers players celebrated winning the NL West pennant by taking a dip in the Arizona Diamonbacks pool after their win. This has lead to much umbrage being taken, including one Sen. McCrankypants (R-POW dontchaknow) who called the Dodgers players “a bunch of overpaid, immature, arrogant, spoiled brats”. Enter one Brain Wilson, he of The Beard – eccentric left handed reliever now pitching for the Dodgers, who responded,

    Senator McComplain knows a thing or two about coming in second and watching someone take a plunge in the pool (I mean poll) #POoLITICS

    Feel the burn, you senile old fuck.

    linkage

  144. 144.

    Citizen_X

    @cckids:

    I’ve learned that if the three of them are sitting in a circle, intently watching something, usually it is a scorpion. They never play with them, just watch them.

    Smart cats. They’re probably saying, “Kill that thing? Are you crazy? Let the human deal with that motherfucker.”

  145. 145.

    Violet

    @sacrablue: Giving up wheat and limiting my intake of vegetable oils–all of them (olive and coconut oil are okay, but not seed oils) has really helped stabilize my blood sugar.

  146. 146.

    WereBear

    @sacrablue: Diabetic? Are you eating to your meter?

    And you’ve got NO business being on a statin:

    If you are a post-menopausal women with high cholesterol, your doctor will almost certainly recommend cholesterol lowering medication or statins. And it just might kill you. A new study in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that statins increase the risk of getting diabetes by 71 percent in post-menopausal women.

    Why women should stop their cholesterol lowering medication

    And if you already have diabetes, it will make it worse!

    My MIL’s best friend has gotten horrible advice on her diabetes for over a decade. She’s now overweight, barely able to walk, and practically hallucinating from the high blood sugar.

    You need Dr. Berstein!

    He’s a Type I who pioneered the use of blood sugar meters among diabetics, went back to medical school in his fifties to make people listen… and people still don’t listen.

    But you should.

  147. 147.

    Roger Moore

    @Gravenstone:

    Sen. McCrankypants (R-POW dontchaknow) who called the Dodgers players “a bunch of overpaid, immature, arrogant, spoiled brats”.

    Republicans have finished killing irony and are now desecrating its corpse.

  148. 148.

    sacrablue

    @Violet: I’ve got back on wheat. but I haven’t eliminated it quite yet…I’ve had to give up too many other vices. Rarely use anything but olive oil. Canola oil smells weird to me when heated, so I avoid it. I tend to threw a lot of food on the grill. For salad dressing, almost always olive oil. My blood sugar is coming down, but it needs to be lower and not spike as high.

  149. 149.

    sacrablue

    @WereBear: I was just diagnosed with all of this about a month ago. And yes, I am quite post menopausal. It is just my LDL that is a little high. The rest isn’t spectacular, but within normal ranges. I see I have some reading to do before my next appointment.

  150. 150.

    WereBear

    @sacrablue: I see I have some reading to do before my next appointment.

    Awesome! Glad to help.

    I know some doctors get all upset with people who research on the Internet. Fortunately, my doctor isn’t like that.

  151. 151.

    The Pale Scot

    @sacrablue: You should use grape seed oil, it has a better ratio of good/bad fats and is great for cooking. It use to be a hard to find and expensive but that is changing. GSO has the highest smoldering point of all cooling oils, and has a nutty taste, I use it for everything from stir fry to omelets. you need some oil in your diet to digest the fat soluble vitamins.

  153. 153.

    sacrablue

    @WereBear: My doctor is very, very young. I asked him if it was okay to flavor my drinking water with pomegranate juice and he knew exactly why I was asking the question. He might be open to alternative treatment, especially if I lose enough weight.

  154. 154.

    WereBear

    @Mnemosyne: You are out there on West Coast, in California.

    It’s only been the last few years that the ADA has backed off their rabid condemnation of low carb, after all. And in a poor, rural, area, as I live in, most of the doctors are not cutting edge.

    People get airlifted to some very fine critical care places; but chronic illness? There’s a very good reason I’m the one who manages my husband’s care.

  155. 155.

    Redshirt

    True story, as I was told: Baby Redshirt woke up from a nap as a 6 month old surrounded by 5 dead scorpions. How did these scorpions die? How did they get in the crib? No one knows, apparently.

  157. 157.

    Violet

    @sacrablue: Giving up gluten has really changed my relationship with food. I’m simply not hungry. Gluten has the gliadin particle that makes you hungry. If I accidentally eat it or if I eat vegetable oils I’m almost instantly hungry–it affects my blood sugar. Avoid those and I can go for long periods without eating. That’s a big change from the way I was before where I HAD to eat or my blood sugar would tank.

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