Beef…it’s what’s for dinner. Or so we thought. ABC News has been investigating the use of a meat filler called Boneless Lean Beef Trimmings, BLBT or pink slime, in seventy percent of ground beef. Oh yeah, and this pink slime is disinfected with ammonia and was previously only sold to cooking oil and dog food suppliers. Um, gross.

J. Patrick Boyle, president of the American Meat Institute, is defending this nasty stuff saying it “is a sustainable product because it recovers lean meat that would otherwise be wasted.” You won’t find a label on packages of ground beef that says it contains pink slime though, so how will you know? You won’t. Janet Riley, senior VP of public affairs for AMI stated, “What are you asking me to put on the label, its beef, it’s on the label, it’s a beef product, it’s says beef so we are declaring … it’s beef.” I personally would like to know if there’s an ammonia lined filler in my beef!

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My future and I collided last night at the grocery store.

It wasn’t one of those gentle brushes with fate, like when you see someone who kind of resembles the person you think you might age into, someone who’s thinner and more fashionable than you’d imagined a fifty-year-old self to be. There was no pleasant “Huh. Could be worse,” moment. This was more like getting backed into by a cement truck, with my past changing lanes to rear-end me just as I got out to check the damage.

Just before getting in line to pay for my groceries, I popped back over to the produce aisle on an organic avocado search. There were two left — how ironic for an emporium of food — two little green rocks which probably were made fun of by all the other avocados before they were sold. Disappointed, I turned back on my heels, fruitless, only forced to bob and weave around a disgustingly happy twenty-something couple who had just come in off the street.

They were hanging all over each other in front of the fresh strawberries and grapes, kissing and laughing when they weren’t content with just hanging. It was too perfect, the sex in their near future, the fruit… it was like Freud had set the scene up himself. I threw my shoulders back and carried my groceries for one to the checkout and got in line, and there she was. Read More »