Popeyes Chicken And Roaches

Do you like Popeyes Chicken? If so you will be excited to know that a Popeyes Chicken location on Detroit's east side was giving its customers bonus protein in their order in the form of grease fed sustainably sourced humanely raised roaches. For some strange reason an unnamed Doordash employee blew the whistle. 

The restaurant location has closed down for cleaning and extermination. Still my bet is that it won't be much longer before the location has re-opened. Then customers will once again be able to get some wriggling insect treats to go along with their greasy poultry, all free of charge! Yum, yum eat em up!!

Antibiotics are losing their effectiveness

The problem with getting better at overcoming a problem is that often times the problem evolves and adapts. This has been the case with antibiotic usage. 

Although antibiotics are literally lifesavers, assisting our immune systems  to defeat some very nasty infections, many infections (fungi and bacteria) have evolved to resist and become immune to the antibiotics and antifungals. They've done this very quickly as humans count time but perhaps not as bacteria and fungi count time. 

One reason for this problem is that people across the world (this problem is evidently most acute in South Asia) have overused antibiotics and antifungals in a wide variety of circumstances. So we're seeing more of these organisms shrug off our best attempts at killing them. It's as if prisoners started developing immunity to small arms fire. Such a thing would be an unwelcome surprise to prison guards tasked to stop breakouts.

Check out the fascinating nine minute video below which explains the dire situation we're in and how worse may be yet to come. As pointed out in the video some other reasons that this situation exists include the requirements of globalized capital and an unnatural food supply chain. There is nothing supernatural here but this is nonetheless a very real horror show.

Michigan Apples

One good thing about living in Michigan is that you get first dibs on a pretty amazing variety of apples every fall. Now it won't officially be fall for another ten days or so but football has started, leaves have begun to turn color, and apple orchards are starting to toot their horns about what they have to offer. Probably in a few weeks when the temperature has fallen to what I consider real fall weather and more of the harvest has become available I will go to an apple orchard near me. I am sure the ones listed in this story are nice.

But in Michigan it's hard to drive twenty minutes without running into an apple orchard somewhere. Maybe next year I will try some a bit farther afield. Of course apple orchards offer more than apples. They have cakes, pies, candy, syrup, donuts, fritters, and all sorts of other goodies that are derived in part or in whole from apples.

Area orchards and cider mills have opened for the season, offering treats such as apple cider, donuts, pies and fresh apples.
The Michigan Apple harvest 2019 crop estimate is 25.25 million bushels (1.06 billion pounds), according to the USApple Outlook meeting held recently in Chicago.
This year's crop estimate is in line with the average harvest, which is about 25.2 million bushels per year.

Howard Webb Delivers Spicy Salsa

How well do you know the people who handle your fast food delivery or orders at a restaurant? Do you think that they like you? Because some of them don't like you very much.

Are you confident that your immune system is in tip top condition? Are your body's white blood cells just fighting fools ready to kill anything in your body that isn't you? If they aren't then you might consider avoiding food that you didn't prepare yourself. 

MARYVILLE, Tenn. — Howard Matthew Webb is not the kind of guy you want delivering your food, if a Blount County warrant is to be believed. A complaint prepared Feb. 22 by Maryville Police Department Investigator Rod Fernandez alleges Webb rubbed his testicles in a cup of salsa during a Dinner Delivered food delivery.

He faces a felony charge of adulteration of food, liquids or pharmaceuticals. Webb was taken into custody Feb. 22 and was still being held Tuesday in jail.

Worms as Food Source

It is interesting to me what different cultures consider okay to eat and what they might consider disgusting to consume. Sometimes the foods we consider good or bad are thought to be so because of completely arbitrary reasons. Maybe a long time ago a certain food was more closely associated with THOSE people and therefore the "good decent" people (snicker) decided that those "nasty" foods were forbidden. Or because people developed in different areas they grew to consider the foods they had around them to be fine and good while looking askance at foods found in other lands. Religious texts often have rules about which animals may be consumed and which ones can't. I can only imagine the horror of a devout South Asian Hindi watching a conquering South Asian Muslim walk up to a cow and slaughter it for food. 

Of course cultures change internally as well. The lobster has a striking resemblance to a cockroach and allegedly some of the same bad habits. It wasn't until the late 19th thru the mid 20th century in North America that lobster was considered a delicacy only enjoyed on special occasions or only consumed by the rich. Before then people thought lobster was nasty food fit only for poor people, enslaved people or prisoners. In certain nations in Africa and Asia insects are considered okay to consume. China is notorious for having a national palate that includes almost everything. 

Detroit Grocery Sells Expired Food

I don't want it sold to children! That's an infamia. In my city, we would keep the traffic in the dark people, the coloreds. They're animals anyway, so let them lose their souls.-The Godfather

Until very recently there haven't been many large chain groceries located within the city. The majority of Detroit liquor stores aka "party stores", food wholesalers, and small to mid size grocery stores happen to be owned by people of Middle Eastern descent. Some of these businessmen and businesswomen have a reputation for a certain disdain for their predominantly black and often impoverished clientele. 
This distaste can be expressed in any number of ways. I don't live in Detroit any more so there's no reason for me to shop at such stores. Even when I did live in Detroit I rarely shopped at those stores as I was taught never to spend money with people who have nothing but contempt for you. Unfortunately some consumers in Detroit evidently feel that they have no choice but to spend money on inferior goods and services. More's the pity.

Disgraceful. The Kit Kat Grocery store on Harper near Van Dyke on Detroit's east side, which has a history of health code violations, sells packaged food with expiration dates as far back as 2015, Hank Winchester of WDIV discovers. 
Winchester of "Help Me Hank," a consumer advocate feature on WDIV, finds Sister Schubert rolls that expired in April 2015, Jimmy Dean sausage with a use-by date of September 2016 and bologna that expired on Aug. 29, 2017. The hamburger meat had freezer burns. A box of Betty Crocker potatoes was sealed with Scotch tape and had a best if used by date of November 2017. 

Mice on the Menu at the Fortune Buffet

Let's say that you are sitting down to eat at your favorite restaurant. Just as you are preparing to consume your preferred meal, the one that is only really done right at this place, you notice mice or rats running across the floor. Do you continue to eat? After all, we all have immune systems for a reason. If you look behind the scenes at almost any restaurant you'll probably discover some information that won't give you a warm fuzzy feeling about eating there. Heck maybe those raisins in the salad aren't really raisins? Or, armed with the knowledge that your food was prepared in a place shared with nasty filthy diseased little mice and their droppings, do you immediately leave the establishment, swearing by the sixty-two moons of Saturn never to set foot in there again?

This is not just a hypothetical.
LIVONIA - Customers are complaining of a rodent infestation at Fortune Buffet in Livonia. Customers took out their phones to record it, as employees ran around with brooms during a lunch buffet. Fox 2's Hilary Golston talked with the owner.

Pepperoni Pizza and Jelly Beans Lawsuits

I was raised with the injunction never to tolerate disrespect in small things or large. I was taught to get what you pay for. I was taught never to think that someone is doing me a favor by taking my money. I learned that if I ordered X to make sure I got X, not Y.

I would have a bigger problem with my parents than anyone else if I meekly accepted shoddy treatment or crappy goods from a business. And I wasn't the only one. Just recently I watched as an elderly irate profane gentleman explained to a clerk at the local grocery story that they had sold him a rotten onion. And even though he had to make a 10 mile round trip he wasn't going to let anyone sell him a rotten f***** onion, by God. 

I appreciate a customer who stands up for himself or herself. However the proper resolution is usually for the store or business to apologize, refund your money, or provide the good or service you initially purchased, occasionally at a discounted price or for free. I'm not sure that the customer needs to file a $100 million lawsuit.

A Muslim man is suing Little Caesars for $100 million after he says he was served and then accidentally ate pepperoni made with pork, a food prohibited by Islamic law. The complaint says Mohamad Bazzi of Dearborn ordered halal pizza twice from the shop on Schaefer in Dearborn. The boxes were labeled "halal," but the pies inside were topped with regular pepperoni. 

Come have a Ball!!

Because sometimes you feel like a nut. And sometimes you don't. We talked before of how some people in other cultures consume insects. Although in this culture that practice is not widespread some people would like to endorse it and spread it. There are plenty of things that people consume in this culture, however which I find just as outrageous as eating insects. And of course not too far from me people are actually having a festival to celebrate the eating of cattle testicles and other delicacies.
DEERFIELD, MI - Members of American Legion Post 392 will host their 16th annual Testicle Festival on Saturday, March 18, offering savory options to patrons, such as cattle testicles and chicken gizzards.

The event, which will run from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., typically draws a good crowd, according to Legion member Al Rau. Rau said the Legion will start serving dinner around noon "until they run out of nuts." Beer and mixed drinks are $2 a pop and there is no cover charge. "You get baked beans, coleslaw and a roll with dinner, plus the nuts and the gizzards," Rau said. "They taste like chicken."
LINK
Yummy! Nuts and gizzards! Even if I still ate meat there would still be some foods which I wouldn't eat for any amount of money. This is not a question of rationality. It is purely about an ick and/or taboo factor. I'm not eating sheep stomachs. I'm not eating hog intestines. And I damn sure won't be eating bull balls. I just have no desire to ingest bovine genetic material. But everyone gets to do their own thing for their diet. 

Are there foods you won't eat under any circumstances?