Whole Foods and John Mackey can suck it

John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods

John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, wrote a guest editorial for the Wall Street Journal opposing health care reform. If you can believe it, the title is:
The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare
Basic features of this “plan:”

• Remove the legal obstacles that slow the creation of high-deductible health insurance plans and health savings accounts (HSAs).

In the event that you’re not paying attention, what Mackey wants is for employers to pay less, and employees to pay more, into the health care system. Seriously.

• Repeal government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover.

Those of you who were foolishly hoping that MackeyCare would at least prohibit insurance companies from declining care for pre-existing conditions are a bit disappointed now, aren’t you? So not only does Mackey want employers to pay less and employees to pay more, he wants the insurance companies to be able to provide less.

• Enact tort reform to end the ruinous lawsuits that force doctors to pay insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.

except….doctors don’t pay hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.

but you already knew Mackey was a liar, if you look at the some of the crap he’s selling at Whole Foods.

Mackey short: I’m not rich enough, gimme some more tax breaks, buy foods from me at inflated prices, and everybody should just donate to charity. Those people who’ve lost their insurance from being fired, or had their insurance cancelled because of a pre existing condition, or just plain can’t afford $5,000 a year per person, can suck it.

Well, John Mackey can suck it.

Whole Foods was a pioneer in organic food retail. Good for them. But what got you here, won’t get you there.
Now there are lots of organic options. And many of them much more socially conscious than Whole Foods. Let me direct you to this compilation of Whole Foods many regressive policies.
Mackey himself has a very dubious history of sock-puppetry on the internet, acting in unethical fashion to manipulate the stock market.

Whole Foods and their CEO/founder are just another greedy, regressive company that just happened to sell a trendy product. The operate under the usual monopoly tenets: High prices, low wages, and low standards. Mackey doesn’t mention that he’s telling his managers to cut back full-time workers to 70%, so he doesn’t have to pay benefits for the other 30%.

And now he’s trying to deprive the country of a much needed healthcare reform.

Not with my money.

Farmers’ markets, Safeway, Krogers, Trader Joes, there are lots of alternatives.

Boycott!!

p.s. Lanny Davis, you can suck it, too.

Movie review: Food Inc.

A very good film, makes its points without being dreary; interviews make for some of the best footage. The take home messages:

Making ghee the easy way

Ghee is really great stuff. It’s one step beyond clarified butter, and tastes sort of like roasted nuts but also like butter, and won’t turn brown or smoke at high temperatures. There are many uses, from omelettes to Indian cuisine, popcorn or backpacking. The chefs tell you to make it on top of the stove, but that method is a pain.…The instructions are confusing and contradictory…boil, reboil?…and you don’t know the temperature of your burners, and so you have to sit there and watch it for 45 minutes, try to guess when all the water is gone, and how much brown is too much, and you’re not even done then; you still have to remove the floaters and crust. And you can very easily wreck it.
How to make ghee the easy way, in the oven, 250-275 degrees x 2 hours, no observation needed:
1. get yourself a pound of unsalted butter.
2. get yourself a pickle jar or similar glass recloseable jar; has to hold 10-20 oz. Pyrex would be best, but not necessary if you warm up the glass and cool the ghee a bit before pouring it in the jar. Wash it like hell, including the lid. Get all the water out, put the lid on loosely and let it cool.
3. get yourself an ovenproof sauce pan; the best kind has a pouring spout.
4. cheesecloth and rubber band, or a metal/plastic coffee/tea strainer desirable but optional. Paper coffee filters may clog. (Unfiltered ghee may smoke or burn slightly.)
5. set your oven on bake at 250-275 degrees preheating not required, but you do need to know if your oven thermostat is accurate. If not, consider using an oven thermometer.
6. put the butter in the saucepan and into the oven, do not cover.
7. come back in two hours and find golden liquid Ghee with junk on top and bottom. If the Ghee is still a little cloudy, put it back in for another 20-30 minutes, and turn the heat up a titch.
8. remove the saucepan from the oven without jiggling it and set it on a work surface.
9. carefully skim off anything on the surface with a spoon; you can save this stuff separately in a tiny bowl and put it on toast.
10. let the saucepan cool for fifteen minutes. again remove any floaters.
11. heat up the jar: either a) about 20 sec in the microwave, or b)screw on the jar cap and heat up your glass jar from the outside with tap water; this will prevent the glass from breaking when the hot ghee hits it (not necessary if your jar is pyrex); then remove the cap but don’t get any water inside.
12. optional: make a filter out of three layers of clean cheesecloth and rubber band it onto the top of the jar so it hangs into the jar (or position your filter of choice).

kinda like this

13. if you choose to hold onto the jar, put something over your hand eg a wet rag, to protect it in case you spill some hot ghee.
14. put a newspaper under the jar in case of drippage; slowly pour the contents of the contents of the saucepan through the filter into the jar. (If you’re not using a filter, don’t let the brown stuff at the bottom of the pan run into the jar, so obviously you will have to leave the last bit of ghee in the saucepan. Pity.)
15. remove the filter and put the lid on loosely and let the jar cool to close to room temperature. Ghee will solidify into a tan “grease”.
16. clean up; scrape the brown stuff from the bottom of the pan and save it with the “floaters” in the frig. Make sure the outside of the jar is clean; don’t want any slippery ghee there, but don’t get any water inside the jar.
17. screw the cap on tightly
18. refrigerated it will last for a year if you don’t get water/contamination in it; at room temp it will last for months.

You ate at an Indian restaurant?

There you go.

No, it was the mussels!

They came up undigested!

Then how could they be the cause?

It’s where my body shut down!

Self-protection!

You know what they cook with

in Indian restaurants? Ghee.

It’s clarified butter.

You get a rancid hit of that…

God! I mean, you can imagine.

When Indira Gandhi got assassinated…

…I was watching when they

broadcast the cremation.

They doused the body

and the funeral pyre…

…in clarified butter

just to get it burning.

–The Sopranos

Miracle Whip I, Miracle Whip II, Mayonnaise, and Hellmans.

Miracle Whip I was a low fat, low cal substitute for Hellman’s/Best Foods/Duke’s Mayonnaise, a commercially sold “sort of” mayonnaise.

Real mayonnaise is quite simple to make, but the issue of using raw eggs is an important one, as a nasty case of salmonella might result. One should either use pasteurized eggs or eggs from a proven local source, or coddle the eggs at 170 degrees before use. The basic idea is to vigorously whip olive oil into egg yolks, adding a touch of mustard, paprika, salt, pepper, vinegar and perhaps some lemon juice. Homemade mayonnaise will keep for only a few days.

Ingredients:

* 2 egg yolks
* 3/4 teaspoon salt
* 1/2 teaspoon powdered mustard
* 1/8 teaspoon sugar
* Pinch cayenne pepper
* 4 to 5 teaspoons lemon juice or white vinegar
* 1-1/2 cups olive or other salad oil
* 4 teaspoons hot water

Preparation:
Beat yolks, salt, mustard, sugar, pepper, and 1 teaspoon lemon juice in a small bowl until very thick and pale yellow. (Note: If using electric mixer, beat at medium speed.) Add about 1/4 cup oil, drop by drop, beating vigorously all the while. Beat in 1 teaspoon each lemon juice and hot water. Add another 1/4 cup oil, a few drops at a time, beating vigorously all the while. Beat in another teaspoon each lemon juice and water. Add 1/2 cup oil in a very fine steady stream, beating constantly, then mix in remaining lemon juice and water; slowly beat in remaining oil. If you like, thin mayonnaise with a little additional hot water. Cover and refrigerate until needed. Do not keep longer than 1 week.

Supposedly, using a blender makes the process much simpler.
Commercial mayonnaise is generally more acidic, because of vinegar or lemon juice, and will keep for longer periods.

Miracle Whip was produced by a new machine which was able to emulsify the ingredients without using as much fat. It is sweeter and tangier than mayonnaise. In an apparent cost-saving move, the recipe was changed by Kraft in 2006 to what I call Miracle Whip II, by removing some of the soy oil and adding water. The new list of ingredients:
WATER, SOYBEAN OIL, VINEGAR, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, MODIFIED FOOD STARCH, SUGAR, SALT, ENZYME MODIFIED EGG YOLKS, MUSTARD FLOUR, ARTIFICIAL COLOR, POTASSIUM SORBATE AS A PRESERVATIVE, PAPRIKA, SPICE, NATURAL FLAVOR, DRIED GARLIC, BETA CAROTENE (COLOR).
The flavor changed, and it became more watery and less stable, much to the dismay of MW’s many devotees.
Hellmans has also changed their recipe. Kraft’s Real Mayo may be the most authentic mayo at present.
Aioli is a simple sauce similar to mayonnaise but may be simply garlic and olive oil, with or without the egg and mustard.

Oscar Mayer dies at 95; long life attributed to never eating hot dogs

“Are you kidding? eat hot dogs? I saw what goes into those things. Joey Chestnut won’t make it to 50.”

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Oscar G. Mayer, retired chairman of the Wisconsin-based meat processing company that bears his name, has died at the age of 95.

He was the third Oscar Mayer in the family that founded Oscar Mayer Foods, which was once the largest private employer in Madison. His grandfather, Oscar F. Mayer, died in 1955 and his father, Oscar G. Mayer Sr., died in 1965.

Mayer retired as chairman of the board in 1977 at age 62 soon after the company recorded its first $1 billion year. The company was later sold to General Foods and is now a business unit of Kraft.

Nestle to package products in Charmin?

New packaging for cookie dough?

Nestle seems to have gotten caught with its poop in the cookie jar:

Nestle USA Friday recalled its refrigerated cookies, one kind of Nestle’s famous Toll House products, after federal health officials linked the dough to infections from the bacteria in 66 people in 29 states, including five in Washington. The recall does not affect other Toll House products, including ice cream that contains raw Toll House dough.

Consumers were asked to throw away the dough or, to get a refund, return it to the store where it was purchased. The FDA advised against baking the dough because bacteria could be transferred to hands and preparation surfaces.

Gee, can’t “teh markets” take care of these poopy food issues? Oh, I guess that was something Bush thought up. I’m surprised the FDA still exists. Nestle seems to have brushed off the inspectors:

A WSJ report today says inspection reports covering the past five years show that officials at the company’s Danville, Va. plant, which made the suspect dough, “refused to allow a Food and Drug Administration inspector to review consumer complaints or inspect its program designed to prevent food contamination.”

Of course, no one wants someone watching while they “go number 2″…

Northern California garden snails are “escargot”

[In answer to a sudden influx of requests, Over the Line, Smokey!'s crack agricultural import legal team has advised us that shipping, mailing or carrying snails across state lines, or enabling such conduct, might result in lengthy prison terms and/or massive fines. OTL,S!, therefore, will not send you snails, unless you live in California, in which case you don't need anyone to send you snails.]
–
Yes, those brown and yellow garden snails you host in your backyard are the same animals that are served as a delicacy in Europe. In fact, they were imported from France in the 19th century for that purpose, but the American palate did not cooperate. They have migrated to the wild.

the local common garden snail is the European brown — Helix aspersa. They were imported here in the early 1850s by a Frenchman who intended to sell them as food, but the market here during the Gold Rush was too unsophisticated for snails. He ended up dumping some snails, and another collection escaped. Snails are hermaphroditic, so of course they reproduced like crazy. …The real enemy of snails is bad weather — snails need a mild climate to survive in, because they freeze. They also don’t do well if it’s too hot and dry. They don’t live all over the United States, you know. People in Wisconsin never have snails in their garden. Neither do my Italian grandparents in New Jersey..

As far as preparation, there is only one problem:

What you have to do first with snails is purify them, because — well, for all you know, they might have just eaten some snail bait. They don’t put arsenic in snail bait anymore, but a lot of snail-bait products do contain insecticide, and carbaryl is not something you want to eat.

Typically, the purification ritual lasts for two weeks. You purge snails by feeding them greens or corn meal — something like that. I just feed them corn meal, and I give them water and I change their food almost daily until I know that their systems are clean.

What kind of pen do you use? If someone wants to venture into snail ranching, what equipment should they buy?

Don’t use a cardboard box, because snails can chew through cardboard with their teeth, their little rasping mouthparts. A friend of mine keeps his snails in an old bathtub. I use a big plastic recycling bin. Remember to keep it covered, or they will escape.

Then it’s pretty routine:

After your snails are purified, how do you cook them?

You boil them first for 10-15 minutes. This forms an incredibly disgusting scum that you must keep cleaning off and cleaning off and cleaning off the top until it’s clear — you might even need to change the water. When the scum is gone, you know the snails are okay — they’re done.

After the snails die, most of them separate from their shells, but some you need to pull out — that’s easy. When they’re all removed, you just chop up the snails, dice them up fine and mix them with olive oil, garlic, butter and parsley. Mix them all together, stuff everything back into the snail shells and then bake them until they’re hot and bubbly.

If you don’t want to deal with the difficulty of stuffing shells and eating them out of shells, you can just cook them inside mushroom caps or in baking dishes that have little depressions. Italians also sometimes use snails in pasta sauce.

So grab that recipe book, and get busy. I’m sure your neighbors will be happy to have you “hunt” their property.