Tips – in thriver words

Bad to Worse

Since last week’s post about growing container vegetables to ensure the safety of your salad, problems in the food supply have gone from bad to worse. The recent recall of 19.2 million eggs was upgraded to a highest-risk warning and Hampton Grocers, Inc. recalled its Lacnola Lactation Granola over possible salmonella contamination.

None of us want to endanger ourselves or our families. A few years ago, recalls didn’t come at the fast and furious pace they do currently. Watching the news or reading the morning paper (remember those days?) seemed sufficient for staying on top of what we need to avoid. Now, it’s easy for a new notification to blend into one you heard yesterday or slip through the cracks when you’re muting a political ad.

In order to maintain the same level of safety, you may need to consider signing up for recall notifications. The FDA’s notification service requires you to fill out this form.

https://public.govdelivery.com/accounts/USFDA/subscriber/new

Additional sources of information include:

The FDA Website www.fda.gov has many levels of information on food, drug, and product recalls.

The CDC website contains information on Current Foodborne Outbreaks. It lists active investigations by germ, has a table of outbreak notices with links to each individual notice, plus additional information. These can be found here https://www.cdc.gov/foodborne-outbreaks/outbreaks/index.html

There’s a federal government website managed by the US Department of Health & Human Services called FoodSafety.gov https://www.foodsafety.gov/recalls-and-outbreaks This site contains safe internal food temperature and other information on food safety in addition to recalls and outbreaks.

Foods overseen by the USDA will have recalls posted on the Food Safety and Inspection Service website https://www.fsis.usda.gov/recalls

Some retailers publish recalls on their websites.

For example, Walmart publishes food, drug, and product recalls here https://corporate.walmart.com/recalls

Costco posts recalls here https://www.costco.com/f/-/recalls

Target’s recall page can be found here https://www.target.com/help/articles/news-safety/product-recalls

Whole Foods has a recall page https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/legal/product-recalls

Kroger lists recall alerts here https://www.kroger.com/i/recall-alerts and here https://www.ralphs.com/i/recall-alerts

Trader Joe’s posts recalls under announcements https://www.traderjoes.com/home/announcements?category=store-openings&id=74537090

The Amazon list of announcements with links resides here https://www.amazon.com/product-safety-alerts and contains a link to take you to recalls of any products you’ve purchased through Amazon.

If the government sites and retailer sites aren’t sufficient for your family, you may want to consider a paid notification service.

Subscription services that push recall notices to you:

Recall Watch https://getrecalls.com/

Recall Ping https://www.recallping.com/

RecallGuard https://recalledbrands.com/#/

SecureRecalls https://www.securerecalls.com/

Recall Radar https://recallradar.company/manage-subscription

I have not used and cannot vouch for any of these services. Most of the paid services have a free trial or unpaid tier so you don’t get locked into paying for a service that doesn’t bring the information you were seeking.

You can also get updates by following some of these sources on social media. For me, this isn’t ideal because I primarily use BlueSky and some of the government sites do not post there.

It’s important to stay safe and I prefer to do so without having to scramble around looking for information resources. Having these links readily accessible removes a lot of stress. We hope this list of resources will serve to reduce your stress as things go from bad to worse.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Container Vegetables

With continuing recalls of food due to cyclospora cayetanensis and salmonella, now’s a great time to consider container vegetables. You don’t have to be an avid gardener or have tons of space to grow vegetables. If you have a patio, porch, deck, yard, flowerbed, or sunny room in your home, you can grow a number of herbs and vegetables. Growing your own gives you the ability to make sure contaminants don’t reach your food.

arugula in water in a black speckled roaster

All you need are pots or planters, soil, and plants or seeds. Pots and planters are often available for free through community gifting groups or at low cost from thrift stores and flea markets. Soil can be purchased from dollar stores, hardware stores, big box retailers, and garden centers. Many of these will deliver to your porch allowing you to avoid carrying heavy bags up steps.

Plants or seeds may be available from gifting groups, neighbors, hardware stores, big box retailers, and garden centers. To choose the most appropriate plants for your space, time of year, and growing zone, visit a seed company website and search by container vegetables then look for recommendations for your growing zone.

If you think you’ll be limited to tomatoes, peppers, and herbs, you’ll be pleasantly surprised. You can grow those in containers, but you can also grow lettuce, kale, arugula, celery, scallions, squash, cucumbers, eggplant, green beans, baby okra, strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, and corn. And that’s not all, radishes, potatoes, and garlic are possible, even inside.

I gardened with my grandmother as a child and once when my children were little. In 2020 when I learned how fragile our supply chain was, I started gardening again. Currently in my garden are cucumbers, peppers, green beans, bok choi, and the end of romaine lettuce and arugula for the season. My blackberry bush is beginning to flower a second time, and I have a blueberry bush in a pot on my back porch.

That means I have a lot of a few things to consume. If you’re used to grocery store produce, you may not be familiar with seasonal substitutions. Yesterday, I used some of my abundance of cucumbers to make gluten-free muffins. They’re not that different from zucchini or kiwi muffins. I just substituted what’s in season from my garden and changed the flavor profile a little.

This is how I grew up eating so it’s not a stretch to try a new way to prepare something I might otherwise tire of. With seasonal substitutions you get the full flavor of fresh vegetables or fruit that haven’t been trucked around plus variety of taste and texture.

As some plants become prolific, you’ll understand why great-grandmothers made pickles, jam or jelly, tomato juice, cider, and canned vegetables and why many people dry or freeze food. Once you’ve invested the labor to plant, water, and weed, you don’t want anything to go to waste.

But you don’t have to go big to avoid recalled foods. A planter of lettuce may give you the salad base you’re missing. A pot of jalapeno peppers can bring the heat you miss to your nachos. Once you’ve made the initial investment, you will most likely save money as well.

I’m not happy with the lack of food safety we’re currently experiencing. But it is a reality. Growing container vegetables and fruit is a way to continue to enjoy fresh produce with an added layer of safety. Now’s a great time to try it out!

Get Those Chips Off Your Shoulder

Get those chips off your shoulder and out of your pantry. Yes, I’m talking to me. I love a salty, crunchy snack. And I know that chips are a lot of calories that don’t add significant nutrition. In summer, I’ve sometimes struggled to get enough salt without processed foods. This summer, I’ve changed my tactics.

To be fair, I might have kept chips as a guilty pleasure but I had to reconsider because my system can’t tolerate sunflower or palm oil and olive oil chips cost $10 a bag. But I still want crunch and some salt after I garden in the mornings.

Porcelain colander filled with cucumbers sitting on dark wood table with dill lying beside it.

The garden brought me a solution – an abundance of cucumbers. I’ve given away a few and considered pickles. But fermented pickles could bring a histamine issue. After some thought, I peeled, sliced, and salted a couple. This resulted in a delightfully crispy, refreshing cucumber snacks.

These will last a couple of days in the refrigerator. And they stay crisp enough to use as a holder for soft cheese eliminating the need for packaged crackers. Top the cheese with herbs and you’ve got an easy appetizer. Or, add a crunchy layer to your caprese salad. They’re also delicious with tzatziki and hummus.

When I mentioned cucumber crisps to my sister, she pointed me to watermelon fries. What, you may ask, are watermelon fries? Well, first, they’re not fried. They’re just watermelon slices shaped like fries, placed in the freezer for 30 minutes then dusted with sea salt flakes and chili powder if desired.

These are a great poolside snack. Some people serve them with a dip made from coconut cream, lime, honey, vanilla and salt or drizzle them with dark chocolate to create a unique summer dessert.

If you can do this with watermelon, it stands to reason you can do it with honeydew or cantaloupe. A platter with all three would be a great addition to your summer BBQ as an appetizer, side, or dessert.

There are many pluses to using fruit to add crunch and salt to your diet instead of chips. You skip other chemicals that are added to chips and crackers. You don’t get that old oil taste some chips have. In fact, you skip the seed oils altogether which makes my tummy happy. The kids don’t cover your chair cushions in colored dust that stains everything in its path.

You also eliminate a lot of calories. And add water. Unless you’re allergic, intolerant, or really hate these fruits and vegetables, there’s not a downside to using them to deliver a needed electrolyte (as long as you don’t overdo, of course). And this summer when produce is suspect, it’s great to incorporate things you can peel.

So, lose the frying, the oil, the man-made chemical compounds, the coloring, the flavoring, and the plastics used to package when you get those chips off your shoulder and out of the pantry! You’ll still be able to enjoy a salty crunch!

Deconstruct Your Salad

When lettuce is suspect, deconstruct your salad. If you don’t have access to locally grown greens this summer, but love salads and want to avoid cyclosporiasis, a few changes may be necessary.

Last week, a friend was bemoaning her inability to eat salad during the current outbreak of cyclosporiasis. She had purchased dried fruit instead. This seemed like an odd choice to me, but her idea of salad is a bit fixed, so it made sense to her to go a whole different direction. But that’s not really necessary.

Take away the leafy greens and you can still have a salad full of delicious, fresh, veggies, fruit and protein. You can also include quinoa, rice, or pasta. When deciding on ingredients, think of it as a deconstructed salad you’d make if you had a bed of leafy greens to top.

Keep things traditional by using slices of yellow or zucchini squash, carrots, bell pepper, tomato, and cucumber. If desired, add broccoli, red onion, cubed cheese (your choice) or cottage cheese. Top with bacon, sunflower seeds, or raw almonds.

If you want to combine your salad and protein, add boiled egg, grilled chicken, fried chicken, cubed ham, roast beef, pulled pork, or deli meat.

Use broccoli for a green base but instead of adding the traditional bacon and cheese, use raisins, or dried cranberries, and apples plus raw almonds, walnuts, or sunflower seeds.

Go southwest with a combination of black beans, corn, pico de gallo, and cheese. Add some pizzaz with cilantro and a sour cream dressing.

Combine throwback Thursday with a carrot, raisin, walnut salad. My grandmother served this regularly, but sans walnuts. You may also want to add pineapple.

Keep it simple. Start with a bed of sliced mushrooms. Top with herbs, fresh garlic, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper. Add a little heat with pepper slices or flakes.

Lean Mediterranean with chickpeas, olives, tomato, scallions, and dill or chickpeas, black beans, cucumber, onion, garlic, parsley, and mint. Both versions are delicious with quinoa.

Like vibrant color? Make a marinated beet salad with onion, avocado, and edamame.

More in the mood for pastels? Make pear salad with goat cheese and spiced pecans. Who needs greens?

Consider returning to tradition with a caprese salad. Tomato, fresh mozzarella, and basil have always played well together.

Finding a way to include fresh vegetables and fruit is important to a healthy diet even as recalls and parasite risks linger. But before you ditch salad made from fresh vegetables, try deconstructing it.