Breads for sale, flies included
Yesterday, I was jonesing for some crusty, grainy bread, so I wandered over to the Grand Central Market. There were 2 stalls displaying the kind of bread I was hankering for, but the bread was out in the open with flies buzzing around. Not a lot of flies, but enough. I can't eat food that flies have landed on. You? Why aren't businesses more careful about this? It's disgusting.
The upshot was, I went home, pulled out my trusty bread machine, and made my own crusty raising-almond-cinnamon while I slept!
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12 Comments:
I can't eat food that's been touched by humans. Those things disgust me.
SqueezeBottle at 1:00PM on 09/18/09
lol you'll never be able to live in Hawaii...
hmw0029 at 1:29PM on 09/18/09
My husband and I were in a nice Italian restaurant. I knew the place's business had been lagging, but I really thought it was the economy. No. So wrong. As I poured the vinegar and oil for the bread, I noticed there were gnats in the vinegar. We won't ever go back there. Ever.
beth1 at 1:51PM on 09/18/09
My farmer's market keeps "bread" (not sure of they are fake or just old?)on the table and fresh loaves for purchase in baskets behind the table. I like this method, that way they aren't sitting out all morning in the sun.
When I was wandering abroad in Asia, all the delicious street food was pretty much out in the open, the key is not to think about it too much: extra protein!
chlamers at 2:05PM on 09/18/09
Funny- I like the added flavor of fly poo- very savory! (smacking lips...)
just kidding.
bisbee at 5:17PM on 09/18/09
turn-off! i have walked out of places, also, because flies are landing on everything. especially this time of year.... they naturally want to go inside. it's a nuisance. i used to have a store and we kept a screen door and if there was ONE fly inside that store we'd get it. some people don't seem to notice or care if there are flies around their food... me, i'm a freak!
i once walked into a place that had trays of cookies, breads, prepared foods et al.... the place was infested with flies. the owner stood there and acted like it was nothing.... i can imagine what the back of his place looked like.
pooch at 7:19PM on 09/19/09
Fall means a trip to the apple farm, and the cider doughnuts are very popular. It's very rare that they are fly free, so I won't buy them, but it doesn't seem to deter too many people.
dmcavanagh at 7:34PM on 09/19/09
Maybe it has something to do with that always lingering dead-fish smell at GC market - I can't stand walking by there!
libraloves at 7:53PM on 09/19/09
Flies are a sign of filth and can be very unappetizing.
My husband and I were in France on our honeymoon at this time of year. We went out to lunch at a place on the shore that had all of the windows open. I ordered a pot of mussels, he ordered an anchovy pizza. His pizza came out smothered in very, let's just say "fragrant" anchovies. A storm came in and dozens of flies descended on the restaurant and they had a hankering for smelly anchovies and mussels.
Mussels, as you know, require both hands and can be messy. These flies were all over our food and us! It was the most unappetizing dining experience I've had. I had no choice but to shoo away flies with my hands covered in mussel juice. Attempt to eat mussel, shoo fly, repeat... I felt like I was eating out of a garbage can. After about five minutes of this, we paid and left. It took months for me to eat mussels again.
yayfood at 11:14PM on 09/19/09
I feel very differently about city flies and country flies on picnics, city mice and country mice. Not a valid bias, but there you go. I figure there's so much going on with your food anyway.
I was in the grocery store once and saw a whole bunch of bags of m&m's on the floor waiting to be stocked. I called the store manager and explained that moms bringing home bags of food weren't expecting to have to wash them before they handled them, and didn't want to have their hands on the floor, in effect, before they dished out candy to the kids. The manager was indignant with me and said that was standard practice in stocking in every store he'd been in. I called corporate headquarters and got a much more sympathetic listener, but she may just have been more experienced at lying responding to customers.
lemonfair at 10:58AM on 09/20/09
The world is not as antisceptic as we think it is. There's a bakery near me that sometimes rolls baker's racks full of warm bread outside to cool. Out the back door. To the alley. Which is mostly unpaved and people drive by and stir up dust. Right next to the trash bins.
Easy enough to decide not to buy from that bakery, but they subcontract to a larger bakery which sells to several large chains including a sub sandwich chain. And a large high-end supermarket chain.
The dude has recently opened a "kosher" bakery with an entrance separate from his regular store entrance. I haven't been in there for a while, but I think it's highly unlikely that he's running separate kosher baking lines or that he has separate ingredients. I'd bet it's the same stuff with a kosher label. And even if the ingredients are different when he buys them, I have no doubt that he would use non-kosher ingredients without hesitating. And I doubt he cleans the mixers and ovens and whatnot as thoroughly as required between nonkosher and kosher items.
Again, you can easily avoid the goods from the storefront, but when he subcontracts, the bread no longer has his label, it has the label from the place he contracts to. And when that place sells to a sandwich shop, you have no idea where that bread came from. Or how many mice slept on it while it was out in the alley.
As far as the packaged M&Ms on the floor, I doubt you'd want to eat off of the packaging machinery at the M&M packaging plant, either. Yeah, it's probably less contaminated than the floor of a grocery store, but it's not a clean room. It's still a factory, with all the dust and grime that includes.
Sometimes it's just better not to think about these things too much.
dbcurrie at 1:25PM on 09/20/09
Kosher is a scam. Some orthodox don't bathe too often, and never on Saturday, because turning on the faucet is work, so they have B.O. instead. Don't get me wrong, I'm Jewish.
My cousin got married on Staten Island a few weeks ago, and she told me that she had to pay some guy $600 to stand there and make sure the buffet was Kosher. What did he do, exactly?
We had holiday dinner last night, and my 25-year-old cousin wouldn't taste the brisket I slaved over because the meat wasn't from a Kosher butcher. Had I told her otherwise, she wouldn't have known, it's not like I was serving here pig. I explained to her that life is difficult enough without all these self-imposed, arbitrary rules, and that she didn't know what she was missing.
Hey, folks! Imagine not being "allowed" to eat lobster, crab, scallops, shrimp, mussels, oysters, clams, crawfish, catfish, ham, bacon, pulled pork, char siu, carnitas, baby back ribs, Italian sausage, chorizo, andouille, kielbasa, etc., etc., etc.
salpico at 3:16PM on 09/20/09