No Recipe Exchange this week, so I’ll share a (basically reassuring) NYTimes article on the current standards for the food we buy:
… Civilian shoppers see food when they go to the market. Mr. Samadpour, the chief executive of IEH Laboratories (short for Institute for Environmental Health), sees mystery, if not downright fraud. On this visit, he is shopping for goods he can test at his labs to demonstrate to a reporter that what you see on market shelves may not be what you get.
While he’s out of the office, he receives a call and dispatches a team on a more pressing expedition: They need to buy various products that contain cumin, because a client just found possible evidence of peanuts, a powerful allergen, in a cumin-based spice mix. The client wants a definitive answer before someone gets sick.
Suppliers, manufacturers and markets depend on Mr. Samadpour’s network of labs to test food for inadvertent contamination and deliberate fraud, or to verify if a product is organic or free of genetically modified organisms. Consumers, the last link in the chain, bet their very health on responsible practices along the way.
The annual cost of food-borne illnesses in the United States is $14.1 billion to $16.3 billion, according to a 2013 analysis by the Agriculture Department. The federal government has called for a shift from reaction, which usually means a large recall after people have fallen ill or died, to prevention, to reduce the number of such episodes. Wary customers want their food to be safe and genuine, and food retailers, who rely on a global array of suppliers, are looking for ways to protect their brands.
Food testing sits at the intersection of those desires. Mr. Samadpour, who opened IEH’s first lab in 2001 with six employees, now employs over 1,500 people at 116 labs in the United States and Europe. He refers to his company, one of the largest of its kind in the country, as “a privately financed public health organization.”…
Okay, maybe not totally reassuring, since the FDA seems to be suffering from a chronic case of regulatory capture:
The Food Safety Modernization Act of 2011, intended to improve food safety practices, has been mired in missed deadlines, which have been attributed to food-industry concerns about overregulation and to an unrealistic timeline given the scope of the overhaul. The delays led to a lawsuit by the Center for Food Safety and the Center for Environmental Health, two advocacy groups. The F.D.A. and the Office of Management and Budget now operate under a court-ordered schedule that requires regulations to be issued in late 2015 and 2016.
The F.D.A. currently stops short of requiring produce tests, although it conducts its own “surveillance sampling,” according to Juli Putnam, an agency spokeswoman. The agency sees two drawbacks to mandatory tests: “A negative product test result does not necessarily indicate the absence of a hazard,” Ms. Putnam wrote in an email, because contamination might show up in another part of a field, and conducting more tests would increase the costs that are passed on to the consumer…
Gin & Tonic
because contamination might show up in another part of a field, and conducting more tests would increase the costs that are passed on to the consumer
Since we can’t test everything, let’s not test anything? It’s almost as if nobody had ever invented the field of statistics.
jibeaux
on the off chance anyone is in this field, let me ask this here. I bought a salad dressing through a produce delivery service which I’ve gotten before and is delish. It has a plastic seal around the cap. Then I got an email recommending that I discard it, giving me a credit for it, because the restaurant selling it does not have its “process authority classification” determined yet, and the restaurant is not supposed to be selling it yet per the state ag department. They said no issues have ever been reported, and that it was a precautionary measure.
would you eat the dressing anyway? I’ve google and can’t figure out if this is bureaucratic hoop, or legit concern like they may not be processing it correctly.
Omnes Omnibus
@jibeaux: I’d eat it, but then I’ve done lots of stupid shit.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Omnes Omnibus:
Hey I buy most of my food at a place called Nicks and Dents. It hasn’t killed me yet. The last time I got sick from eating something (Wednesday) was after eating a Seafood Chowder from a restaurant down town that considers itself gourmet.
NotMax
@jibeaux
As you say you’ve eaten it before and enjoyed it, go for it.
Or request a full refund if trepidation is too strong.
Roger Moore
@efgoldman:
Funding is a huge issue. My interactions with the FDA have been on the drug manufacturing side. As I understand it, that is funded by fees on drug manufacturers, which means that it’s still pretty competent and well staffed. That’s why it’s so rare to hear about recalls for bad batches of medicine that have been making people sick; the manufacturers live in genuine fear of FDA inspections. The biggest recent case of a bad medicine making people sick was a result of a compounding phаrmacy, which was slipping through a loophole to avoid FDA regulation.
Unfortunately, the food inspectors and the people reviewing new drug applications don’t have the same level of resources. The new drug people don’t have the resources to dig as much as they should, so they wind up depending on data from the companies making the applications.
The food inspectors have even fewer resources, so plenty of food processors rarely or never get inspected. I assume a big part of that is that the food industry is structured differently. Drug manufacturing is dominated by a relative handful of companies, with relatively few boutique producers, while farming and food processing has so many small-time players that it’s very difficult to inspect them all.
Of course there’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg question there. The drug manufacturers have consolidated at least in part because of the burden of dealing with FDA regulation. But that then reduces the basis for criticizing new regulations as shutting down small-time operators, since there aren’t any small time operators to get shut down. In contrast, the relatively lax regulation of food producers means that small producers are still viable. They wind up being a loud constituency arguing against tighter regulations, which they are worried could shut them down.
Starfish
The cumin thing is not a mystery. The cumin crop in Gujarat did not do very well so people mixed peanut and almond shells in their unmonitored global supply chain, and at least one of the US wholesalers was contaminated. Here is a story about it.
Violet
@jibeaux: Wasn’t sure what process approval was so a quick google found this from Georgia. Probably generally applies to most states:
Sounds like it’s just making sure it’s made correctly and packaged for being on a shelf, which is different from being served in a restaurant. If you’ve eaten it before and been fine, I’d probably go ahead and keep using it. Maybe not let it sit too long open in the fridge, but it sounds like it’s mostly a bureaucratic issue.
Mike in NC
I look forward to President JEB appointing our moron Senator Tillis (the tool who thought restaurants shouldn’t require employees to wash their hands — government over-regulation!) as the head of the FDA.
raven
@Violet: There was a big fight here about non-pasteurized
milk at farmer’s market.
NotMax
@efgoldman
Last time I ingested PCP, Nixon was in office.
:)
Redshift
Good thing not testing doesn’t have any cost to the consumer, right?
jibeaux
Thanks guys. They gave me the full refund. I just wondered: refund + dressing = win. I’m gonna go for it. If I die, I’ll have my husband let you guys know.
Here’s another question. I have a small services business taking cash, checks and paypal. Have been thinking about credit cards but haven’t looked into it thoroughly. Best to have people pay remotely as opposed to a square. Recommendations? Bonus points if it uses that gravity company that gave everyone a raise.
jl
@Gin & Tonic:
I think from a quality control point of view, production safety standards that ensure high quality process are preferable to testing that catches problems of low quality production standards. So, I am more concerned about what are reported as vague and flexible production standards.
I don’t think the article reports enough to know what is going on with testing, since no way to tell what FDA is doing with its surveillance testing program. Mandatory testing of everything would be a very inefficient and costly way to do it, and may be hard to do well.
An efficient and high quality testing program might not require regular testing of a long list of products. Maybe better to focus on some high risk areas, like certain leaf veggies for E Coli, with better supply chain tracking in order to recall contaminated foods quickly and find source.
It would be interesting to know more about the FDA surveillance program. Might be best to just make that bigger.
@efgoldman:
My limited and somewhat dated experience with FDA funded research is that everything is nano-managed by lawyers, whose opinions, and IMHO very crabbed and narrow minded concerns, fears, chronic panic attacks cause serious problems in getting anything done. They seem to think that the most arcane convoluted and cloistered legalistic sophistry imaginable should rule every aspect of life, which also causes problems. When their constant and oppressive oversight and kibbitzing render work impossible, fusses were made until they were over ruled.
Litlebritdifrnt
@jibeaux: My boss was dead set against taking credit cards cause he didn’t like the idea of the bank taking a percentage when our clients paid. We started taking them last year and it has been so convenient for our clients that it has worked out like a charm. They can just call in with their credit card number instead of having to stop by with cash or a check, it saves them a boat load of time and it saves me trips to the bank. Sure the bank gets their cut but it all evens out in the end.
NotMax
Just now remembered that during the Dubya years, the GOP congress made it a death penalty offense to kill a federal chicken inspector.
Tree With Water
I bet the Koch brothers have used food tasters for years. And recalling the devil looks after his own, maybe since birth.
RSA
I know very little about this area, but I’ve noticed that when there’s a food-borne illness in the news, it seems to take quite a long time for authorities to figure out where the food has come from and where more of it is going. Testing aside, I get the impression that we don’t even have the ability to track food around the country, a lot of the time. If that’s correct, I think fixing it would be a good first step.
NotMax
@Tree With water
“Yup, that chateaubriand sure as shootin’ tastes funny. Better I take it into the kitchen. But here, this peanut butter sandwich is A-OK.”
Violet
@raven: Raw milk is a big issue all over the country. People claim it’s got all sorts of health benefits. Listeria is a huge issue with milk so the government says no, can’t sell it. Various states have come up with various forms of dealing with it, from no raw milk sales allowed at all, to farm sales being okay to maybe even farmers’ market sales or other types of small batch sales. Lots of “Keep the ebil gubmint outta mah milk!” types involved in the raw milk issue.
scav
Oh, you want your food to be edible? There’s a slight surcharge for that, over and above our usual standard booking and handling charges. Would you care to upgrade to palatable? What about joining our Gold-Star frequent eaters VIP program?
Yes Sir We Have No Bananas Republic.
Anne Laurie
@Roger Moore:
The other chicken-&-egg issue there — there’s a genuine criticism that the FDA has decided to devote an overweighted percentage of their scandalously-short resources to demanding paperwork compliance from every farmer’s market stand & local restaurant that wants to bottle its premium salad dressing for a handful of customers. Because it’s easer to show six-sigma paperwork “results” from those neighborhood busts, rather than spending tedious weeks or months sniffing around the chicken factories or the mega-slaughterhouses or the produce wholesalers who measure their sales by the boxcar… concerns that can afford to keep a squadron of ‘quality inspectors’ and lawyers between the food-handlers and the undermanned inspectors. Which means we consumers may not find out about the little oopsies (peanut contamination of frozen veggie burgers sold all over the country, or e-coli in the fast-food burgers, or melamine in pet food) until dozens or hundreds of people have been sickened or killed by the Invisible Hand…
FlyingToaster
@Violet: Count Massachusetts in the nanny state category; they banned farmer’s market sales; you can buy it at the farm, with a log of all sales. Since MA is small, it’s easy to get to the farm, but it is a hassle for people who want raw milk. Not me; I’m allergic to cow’s milk, and WarriorGirl is fine with Garelick 2%.
I’m afraid artisanal cheeses will go the same way. Which sucks. I don’t look forward to having to drive to effing Vermont once a month.
scav
@efgoldman: I don’t know. There are some cheese fiends etc types in there, but I don’t know how representative a sample I’m pulling from. Let me rephrase that. I’m unclear as to exact number of deviations of weird my sample set manages to capture.
Omnes Omnibus
@FlyingToaster: Illegal cheese.
jl
@FlyingToaster: I don’t drink raw milk or other raw fresh dairy products, but I think I see them in California supermarkets (Edit: well, upscale gourmet supermarkets). But I don’t pay much attention, so will remember to check next time I get a quart. Plenty of raw cheese around.
I think the safety of raw dairy products depends on the density of cows in the area. Few cows that don’t move around much separated by large distances. A situation which describes, probably…. Alaska and no place else. And up there I drank raw milk and made raw butter and buttermilk all the time out in the sticks. Neighbors in isolated places will take turns running a four or five cow mini dairy for a couple of years and then move the cows over to some else willing to do it for awhile.
I drank raw milk up there without a concern. But won’t touch it in California.
NotMax
@Omnes Omnibus
Back in college days, belonged to what for all intents and purposes was the Cheese of the Month Club.
The double Gloucester was to die for.
Violet
@FlyingToaster: The federal government has made it really difficult for foreign countries to sell raw milk cheeses in the US so they’re stopping export of them. At least that’s what I read about six months ago. Not sure if they came to any kind of agreement about it.
It’s a challenging issue. Unpasteurized milk can be very dangerous. Listeria is serious and can kill people. The government doesn’t want that to happen so in the interest of public health they require pasteurization. But people like their raw milk and raw milk cheeses so there’s push back. Various states find compromise in various ways.
Corner Stone
Private eyes. They’re watching you.
jl
@Violet: Listeria and brucellosis. I think listeria is a threat mostly to people with compromised immune systems and pregnant women. Brucellosis is a very serious disease that is a threat even to very healthy and fit people. The more fermented and aged a raw dairy product is, less likely to transmit brucellosis, but I don’t know about listeria.
That’s why one raw dairy thing I will eat is dry aged cheeses.
CONGRATULATIONS!
What could possibly go wrong? I feel safer already knowing that profit’s involved.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Just nobody fuck with my Mimolette again and we won’t have any issues.
Yatsuno
@jl:
Only pasteurization will fix that. Listeriais a bacterial infection, so the milk has to be warmed to a high enough temp to kill it. That’s part of the risk of raw milk.
Cliff in NH
OMG.
I drove a few miles to a Chipotle, it sounded good, and well…
The chicken was dry and charred, the brown rice was quite a bit undercooked, slightly crunchy.
several hours later, projectile diarrhea. It’s too bad Chipotle didn’t improve their quality before and after a candidate stopped at their chain.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cliff in NH:
Or maybe, you had a single bad experience. For which you have my sympathies.
Cliff in NH
I sure hope so, I’m just glad I make my own stuff usually.
jl
@Yatsuno: That is true. But I didn’t say that eating only fermented aged raw milk cheese fixed the problem, only reduced the probability that the product could transmit the disease.
I think in dry aged fermented cheese, reduces it enough that i am willing to eat it in California.
But a legit raw milk operation in California is going to have the holy hell inspected out of it frequently. But the consequences of a mess up are so severe that I won’t risk it for most products, but will for some.
Places my family hangs out in Alaska, its home dairy raw milk or nothing at all until someone travels into a nearby town big enough to have store milk, and that is stale, skanky, and you have to drink it right away or it will go bad.
If superpasturized products get stocked out in the Alaska podunk village stores, then that might change.
But if I am drinking milk from only four or five cows for 50 or more miles in every direction, and the cows are regenerated in old fashioned ‘home made’ way (as it were), rather than trucked in, I am willing to risk it there too. And I know who the hell is caring for them and milking them.
Violet
@Cliff in NH: Like any chain establishment, be it a fast food restaurant, tire shop, supermarket, gym, or anything else, there are good ones and bad ones. Sounds like you went to a bad Chipotle. Sorry you got sick.
Cliff in NH
@Violet:
I know, It’s just that I don’t eat lots of chain food really…
https://www.flickr.com/photos/[email protected]/8450055124/
I ate stuff from that sick crop and never got sick, only when I go commercial.
Would love fungus killing spray recipes BTW.
Omnes Omnibus
I think we may have been abandoned overnight again.
max
Wow. The Blackhawks just melted down.
max
[‘3 goals in about 3 minutes. Corey Crawford covered himself in grease.’]
Violet
@Omnes Omnibus: This place has really become quiet at night. Only occasionally do the overnight threads have much activity. Remember when I first came here there were a lot of late night folks.
Cliff in NH
Oh well.. g’nite.
Molly is starting to get her zoomies on anticipating bike weather.
here is Amber the downhill dog making Molly excited.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgKjPHDt7js
Violet
@Cliff in NH: I have a friend who gets sick every time he eats at McDonald’s. He’s on the road a lot in situations that make it difficult for him to bring his own food and the whole crew will stop at some place, often a McDonald’s. And he gets sick every time.
Omnes Omnibus
@Violet: I do my best, but sometimes I do need to sleep.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Omnes Omnibus:
Lurking and dutifully watching stuff from the newly expanded DVR.
Redshift
@jl: Whereas here in Virginia, lots of the same people who are fighting for the right to buy raw milk are also fighting tooth and nail against any regulations and inspections of producers, because freedumb!
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack (phone): Scaramouche is on TCM now, but I am rather iffy about the movie version as it omits Omnes Omnibus.
Cliff in NH
@Violet:
Mc’d’s is one of the few places I usually don’t get sick, perhaps cause of my stopping there on road trips.
Every now and then they do destroy me though. Usually far away from my local bacterial cultures.
Mnemosyne
@jl:
They recently found Campylobacter in raw milk here in California, so that’s another bug that could be in it.
I tend to agree with you that it’s one thing to drink raw milk from your neighbor’s cow when you know exactly where it’s been. It’s another entirely to drink commercial raw milk.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cliff in NH: It sounds like you may have sensitivity issues rather than there being problems with the restaurants.
Cliff in NH
@Steeplejack (phone):
I mentioned it years ago, but it’s still alive and serving after several hard drive upgrades and a dead drive.
Drobo. Love it.
Redshift
@max: The Capitals did that in game 1, and it looked like it might continue tonight, but then they got their act together and came back from being down 3-1 to win it.
Roger Moore
@jl:
That is at the core of Good Manufacturing Processes, which are very important to FDA. The way they say it is that you can’t test quality into a product; you have to design quality in from the very beginning. To use an analogy, imagine you’re cooking dinner. You can’t make it delicious by waiting until the end of the preparation and throwing out any meal that doesn’t taste good. You have to start with good ingredients and follow a good recipe. If you do that, you may not even need to taste it along the way.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Omnes Omnibus:
It’s actually a good movie, but I can’t watch it right now. Two things are being recorded, so I can watch one of those channels or something previously saved. Will probably look in later. Seem to remember some hot ’50s honeys in there.
Oh. Janet Leigh.
Violet
The really big news of the day is that Univision is canceling “Sábado Gigante.”
It’s such an institution. Hard to believe. And it’s been on 53 years! Amazing.
Cliff in NH
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yea, I’m sensitive to poor hygiene.
woo. hoo.
yeah!
bye.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Steeplejack (phone):
Okay, I can watch it now.
Stewart Granger is Diamond Joe Biden. Weird.
Violet
@Omnes Omnibus: You can’t hold down the late night shift all by yourself.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack (phone): It may be a decent movie in its own right, but I have read and reread the book too many times for the movie to work for me.
Omnes Omnibus
@Violet: I could if I was DougJ.
Mnemosyne
So I found out tonight that there is a new opera that only El Rey Network addicts could love: “Hercules vs. Vampires,” based on the Mario Bava film Hercules in the Haunted Underworld.
I’m trying to figure out how to trick my spouse into going, because so far he’s resisting.
Helen
So.. what? Watching David Letterman. Said he asked John Mayer, who is inducting the late Stevie Ray Vaughn into the Hall of Fame, to sing this very very great song.
And it’s American Pie. I actually know that song.
Is Don McLean dead? And what do Stevie Ray Vaughn or John Myer have to do with American Pie?
What?
Violet
@Omnes Omnibus: True, but you might just end up talking to yourself via all your sockpuppets. Unless you’re hearing voices in your head that might get a little tiresome.
Omnes Omnibus
@Violet: I’ve never really understood math people.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Violet:
Hell, I’ve done it.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Mnemosyne:
As well he should.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Helen:
Letterman getting senile?
Mnemosyne
@Steeplejack (phone):
He doesn’t hate Mario Bava the way he hates Dario Argento, so I have that smidgen of an argument to convince him. I still say it sounds fun, but he doesn’t always share my love of cult movies.
NotMax
@efgoldman
Yeah, the place didn’t used to go nearly static for hours on end.
Roger Moore
@RSA:
@Anne Laurie:
Of course these issues are related. As somebody who has to deal with FDA paperwork, I’m very sympathetic to people who find in onerous and burdensome. To be entirely honest, it’s a major pain in the ass. But it’s vital if you want to be able to do as RSA says and be able to quickly track where a contaminated batch of food has gone and what downstream products might be contaminated. If you want to be able to do that, you need to keep records of every batch you make, where the ingredients came from, and so on. There are certainly good reasons to keep a closer eye on big producers than small ones, since foodborne pathogens can multiply and contaminate an entire batch, but a blanket exemption for small producers is probably going too far in the opposite direction.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Mnemosyne:
That is one seriously tiny smidgen. Just saying’.
Violet
@Steeplejack (phone): I have too, but after a couple of comments and no one else shows up it just feels sad.
@Omnes Omnibus: Math people are interesting. My neighbor was a math professor and I got to know him fairly well along with his ex, who was also a math professor, and many of his grad students. For the most part I enjoyed hanging out with them.
Math at that level was completely baffling to me.. I remember one gin-and-tonic-fueled Friday afternoon where he and one of his grad students tried to explain to me what it was they were researching. They had a great time trying to dumb it down for me. Didn’t work so well from my perspective but the g-and-t’s were good!
NotMax
@Violet
Made with a mathematically precise ratio of tonic to gin?
Omnes Omnibus
@NotMax: Apply the Goldilocks Principle.
Mnemosyne
@Steeplejack (phone):
He can at least understand the visual appeal of Bava, and respect that Bava knew story wasn’t his strong suit, so he threw as much style in as he possibly could.
On the Argento side, he was dragged (not by me) to a showing of Suspiria and never got over how stupid it was, and how inflated Argento’s sense of self-importance seemed to be. There are one or two Argento films I like, but they’re his gialli, not his supernatural stuff.
MomSense
@Helen:
I don’t know what to make of Mayer. The guy is a terrific blues guitarist and yet he writes and plays such fluff tunes. Here’s proof. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VxYAAe6CdI
I have a terrible cold that migrated to my chest so I stayed home from work today. Even though I felt miserable it was a thoroughly enjoyable day. I sat in the sun, cuddled with the pup, and made a kick ass Eladrin Ranger character with my youngest. Then we had pho and binge watched Daredevil. Have a bunch of pre-teens coming over in the morning to play D&D so I’ll make some blueberry muffins early.
dogwood
@Violet:
It is quiet. Where is Martin? I haven’t seen him around here in awhile, and he’s one of my favorites.
Violet
@NotMax: No, they were pretty free with the gin. Always with lime, of course. One time they ran out of lime and that was a big disaster for them. Someone had to go to the store. They were fun guys. I remember coming home from work and they’d be sitting on my neighbor’s stoop well into a bottle of gin. They’d invite me over and we’d be howling as they’d try to explain “higher maths” to me.
Mnemosyne
@MomSense:
I went to the first day of the Vogue Knitting convention and spent way too much money at the marketplace. Tomorrow is my Knit to Fit class (two sessions, all day) and Sunday is my class on gauge, which I have an awful time with.
The marketplace was sadly small, especially compared to a big convention like Stitches, but they had a lot of trouble with the last VK convention in LA (especially with parking) and a lot of vendors refused to come back because there was such a huge die-off in attendance. Hopefully this one will go more smoothly.
Violet
@dogwood: People have stopped commenting, I think. Balloon Juice just isn’t as busy as it used to be. At least that’s how it seems to me. Late nights are really slow. Sometimes hours go by between comments. Go to bed, wake up and the same thread is there.
Violet
@MomSense: Sorry you’re sick. You’ve had a rough go of it lately.
NotMax
@Violet
Bravo. Must have fresh lime
And roll the lime between the palm of the hand and a flat surface before slicing to accentuate the juiciness.
MomSense
@Mnemosyne:
I would love to go to an Amy Herzog class. She is originally from Maine and I think lives just outside Boston now. She did a class at a yarn shop a bit South from me but I couldn’t make it that week. I love her approach to fit and I think helps with buying clothes in general as well as knitting.
Gauge is such a strange thing. I’m always messing with making a size larger or smaller if I don’t like or can’t get the right gauge. I’m also lazy and rarely wet block my swatches.
I finished knitting a cowl I designed tonight. It’s really pretty. I can’t wait to see it once it is blocked.
I’m so bizarre now about yarn. I’ve got my favorites and usually just order them. I went to a fiber weekend show and barely bought anything.
MomSense
@Violet:
Ironically, the day I wanted to call in sick of work my boss showed up really sick and infected the rest of us.
NotMax
@dogwood
Been ages and ages since sans culotte was visibly here, too.
Violet
@NotMax: Yeah a gin and tonic with anything but lime, or without lime, is just wrong. I’ve seen them served with lemon in England and…I can’t even. I mean, lemon? Really? Have they no standards?
Violet
@MomSense: Figures. That’s how it goes. Didn’t you hurt your ankle or calf around Christmas? How’s that doing?
NotMax
@Violet
NotLimeys?
Agree. Keep the lemon for the Tom Collins.
Anne Laurie
@Cliff in NH:
Some of the plant scientists here recommended Serenade for my poor blight-threatened tomatoes, which works great, unless there’s a spell of rainy weather & I don’t get around to respraying. This year, I’m also going to test some Actinovate as a soil drench before I put out my mail-order plants.
Violet
@NotMax: It’s baffling to me. I’d rather have it with nothing than with lemon.
Mnemosyne
@MomSense:
I didn’t buy any yarn today because I’m still on a self-imposed yarn diet — my stash is way too big. I may buy a few skeins of sock or laceweight, but I just don’t have room to store sweater quantities of anything.
I think Amy Herzog has a Craftsy version of her class, so there’s always that option. They frequently have $19.99 sales of their older classes.
Gauge is … yeah. I ‘m hoping this class helps, because I ended up with a cardigan that is 50″ around when it was supposed to be 38″. Yes, I swatched. And washed the swatch. So I don’t know WTF happened, but I’m nervous about making any more garments until I find out.
NotMax
@Violet
There was one time when I was doctoring up the contents of a #10 can of refried beans to take to a party and accidentally grabbed the wrong green bottle from the fridge, adding a goodly splash of lime juice instead of lemon juice.
Took the better part of an hour to add in additional ingredients, heat, taste test, repeat, to compensate for that error.
Violet
@NotMax: They are very different. Lemon just doesn’t enhance a gin and tonic the way lime does.
Steeplejack
@Mnemosyne:
Okay, gonna make an observation here, and I hope it doesn’t sound too lecture-y.
I’m guessing that your husband is not going to the knitting event this weekend, because that is something you are interested in and he is not. And you’re cool with that. But your husband does have a deep and knowledgeable appreciation of movies, so that’s something that you share. The potential problem is that his deep and knowledgeable appreciation of movies may not overlap exactly with yours. Believe me, I’m speaking from experience about this (with movies, music and fiction). So the fact that he knows and has an opinion on Bava and Argento does not automatically mean that he is interested in a Bava-based opera—or could even be coaxed into going to it as a “doing this for my spouse” thing. Sometimes you have to pull back from the “We both like movies, so how can you not like this?!” thing.
Again, sorry for the preachy tone, but this was something I learned the hard way. Some stuff you have to put in the knitting category, even though he should
likebe open to it.P.S. I pretty much am an El Rey network addict, and the idea of a Bava-based opera called Hercules vs. Vampires leaves me cold.
Anne Laurie
@Violet: Your friend may be sensitive to some “harmless” ingredient in the chain’s standard supply. I used to get sick whenever I ate at Wendys; eventually a friend who’d worked there helped me figure out that their ‘never frozen’ burgers are shipped in sulfite-laden grease tubs, and I already knew I was sensitive to the sulfites that are used as preservatives in commercial salad bars, cartons of egg mix, some dried fruit, etc.
It’s not a bad thing that hotel breakfast bars use jugs of pre-cracked eggs — most people have no trouble digesting the relatively minute amounts of preservatives & it means they can eat omlets on the road. But if we’re on a trip with the dogs in the back seat & the Spousal Unit wants to drive through Wendys, he knows we’ll have to go to a different drive-through for me.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Hercules vs. Vampires could be a kickbutt Tim Burton movie.
Mnemosyne
@Steeplejack:
Don’t worry, I’m mostly just teasing him behind his back here online and am planning to hit the matinee by myself. We’re not the kind of couple who has to be joined at the hip for all events.
I am a little bummed that the knitting convention and the Festival of Books are the same damn weekend, though. He’s heading down to the FoB either tomorrow or Sunday (depending on if he can get tickets to his preferred sessions) and I’ll be in Pasadena with my knitting needles.
MomSense
@Violet:
Wow you have a great memory. I hurt my foot/ankle in an embarrassing incident of trying to walk when my foot was asleep. I woke up and didn’t realize it wasn’t working until it was flopping the wrong way. I’ve been back at the gym for a couple of months now and no problems.
@Mnemosyne:
Another reason I tend to work with fiber I know is because it can react so differently to washing/blocking. 12″ off is a lot. Certain fiber does stretch over time. Cotton and alpaca can be tricky. Some fibers don’t have great memory and that can cause problems. huh. What kind of yarn was it?
Mnemosyne
@MomSense:
Cascade 220 Superwash. I know (now) that superwash has an unpleasant tendency to go off-gauge, and a lot of it needs to be machine-dried as well as machine washed. Still a traumatic experience, especially since it was Lily Chin herownself who measured it and exclaimed in front of the class, “This is fifty inches around!”
(This was at Stitches in Santa Clara several years ago, but it still stings, as you can see.)
NotMax
@MomSense
Knitters’ music?
(Yes, it’s a – ahem – stretch.)
Violet
@Anne Laurie: That could be it. I don’t think given where he lives now and how his job works that he’s going to be able to find out. Or, if he did, if it would make much difference. Sometimes McDonald’s is the choice and you just have to make do.
@MomSense: Glad it’s all healed up. Sometimes things like that can linger, so I’m glad to hear yours wasn’t like that.
Mnemosyne
@NotMax:
G found this knitting-related song for me (he likes the artist):
“The Hat” — Ingrid Michaelson
MomSense
@Mnemosyne:
I made some socks out of the sport weight 220 superwash. They started out normal and ended up sized for a giant. The dryer is your friend. Just check it every 20 minutes and/or use a lower heat setting.
@Violet:
I was good and really rested it and didn’t rush going back to the gym. That it was sooooo cold I only wanted to curl up with a blankie in front of the fire helped too.
MomSense
@NotMax:
Wow that song brings back memories. I remember sneaking downstairs to spy on a party my parents were having and that album was playing.
Mnemosyne
@MomSense:
I’m hoping to discuss my other nemesis in class tomorrow: armholes. They’re always, always too goddamned big, especially when I knit in the round. How are you supposed to measure them? The patterns seem to assume an average bust, which is something I ain’t got, and they adjust the armholes for arms bigger than mine. Very annoying.
NotMax
@Mnemosyne
Perhaps the gold standard, performed by a singer I’m partial to, whom G might like as well.
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
Tim Burton is dead to me right now. He and Johnny Depp should be legally estopped from working together for three to five years.
Steeplejack
@Mnemosyne:
Glad to hear it.
MomSense
@Mnemosyne:
I always have to adjust the sleeve length or long sleeves end up looking 3/4 length.
IIRC she will probably suggest knitting in pieces and seaming so that you can customize your designs to fit your measurements.
I’m a stick figure with a short body and ridiculously long arms so my sweaters look bizarre when they are not on my person. I have a horrible time finding pants that are long enough without having the waist up under my armpits.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Once mused that it would be a hoot for him to buy a certain chain steakhouse and rename it Tim Burton’s Ruth’s Chris.
Anne Laurie
@MomSense:
Hmph. Short torso, long limbs is the “model’s body”. Try finding clothes that fit on a long torso and short limbs — that’s why I mostly wear skirts instead of pants!
themis
@jibeaux:
I’ll play. Yes, I have an actual degree in this. And before today, it is as useless as you think it is…
Don’t eat it.
My general rule is that if it cries when you chop it, don’t eat it. and yes, i have a beautiful steak thawing in the fridge.
themis
@Anne Laurie:
I did a thing last week on this thing right here… ‘Perfect bodies’ for 100 years. For the 2010ish? Bootie babes. Even the men in my class groaned.
And yes, I’m that prof.
themis
@Gin & Tonic:
Thank you for noticing.
themis
@Mike in NC:
I’ve spent my day being less than lovely (fucking allergies)@jibeaux:
But I am your customer. yep… me
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@efgoldman:
because it is.