Miami Food Blog

Stephanie Smith was in a coma for nine weeks after being infected with E. coli.

Then her diarrhea turned bloody. Her kidneys shut down. Seizures knocked her unconscious. The convulsions grew so relentless that doctors had to put her in a coma for nine weeks. When she emerged, she could no longer walk. The affliction had ravaged her nervous system and left her paralyzed.

Ms. Smith, 22, was found to have a severe form of food-borne illness caused by E. coli, which Minnesota officials traced to the hamburger that her mother had grilled for their Sunday dinner in early fall 2007.

"I ask myself every day, 'Why me?' and 'Why from a hamburger?' "Ms. Smith said. In the simplest terms, she ran out of luck in a food-safety game of chance whose rules and risks are not widely known.

Meat companies and grocers have been barred from selling ground beef tainted by the virulent strain of E. coli known as O157:H7 since 1994, after an outbreak at Jack in the Box restaurants left four children dead. Yet tens of thousands of people are still sickened annually by this pathogen, federal health officials estimate, with hamburger being the biggest culprit. Ground beef has been blamed for 16 outbreaks in the last three years alone, including the one that left Ms. Smith paralyzed from the waist down. This summer, contamination led to the recall of beef from nearly 3,000 grocers in 41 states.

Ms. Smith's reaction to the virulent strain of E. coli was extreme, but tracing the story of her burger, through interviews and government and corporate records obtained by The New York Times, shows why eating ground beef is still a gamble. Neither the system meant to make the meat safe, nor the meat itself, is what consumers have been led to believe.

"I don't want to get stabbed for a hot dog" might be the quote of the year. Last week, a riot- the definition for that term seems to be getting looser by the news story, but we'll roll with it- broke out at a Brooklyn Shwarama King when Hasidic customers discovered the place was serving chicken hot dogs falsely advertised as kosher. The manager, Yosef Baron, had to fend off an angry mob with his meat-trimming electric knife.

It got Short Order wondering: how do we know that what's billed as kosher really is?

Not surprisingly, Miami Beach- psst, there's a large Jewish population there- has grappled with this question before. In fact, in 1969, the city created a tax-paid "kosher inspector" position that was in place for fifteen years, until the ACLU picked a fight with it. Their argument: that Miami Beach was using government funds to watchdog a private religion.

Nowadays, it's a "self-regulated" thing, says Rabbi Mordechei Fried of Kosher Miami, a private inspection group. Restaurants and stores hire KM as full-time "kosher supervisors" to make sure they're using the correct meat and handling procedures. In return, the business get KM's stamp of approval. "Each vibrant Jewish city has their own group of rabbis that have kosher restaurants under their supervision," Fried explains. "We feel secure enough to eat at restaurants, but unfortunately these things like what happened in Brooklyn can happen. It's not necessarily a failure of the system, it's just being human, there's always going to be a bad apple."

I just got this news release from JusticeNewsFlash.com, a "Pro American Legal Distribution Service," and it's just too delicious not to quote directly:

Skilled South Florida personal injury attorney, Susan Ramsey, is proficient with consumer health law news and is reminding all Americans that the holiday time is a constant celebration with family, friends, and co-workers. The holidays is a time of rejoicing and increase food handling and consumption accompanies celebrations and festivities. Review of proper food handling, heating and consumption can prevent and help with food problems all year long saving innocent Americans from injury, illness, disease and even death from food poisoning.

Got that? I think what the attorneys are trying to tell us is that all that lukewarm food around on tables sitting this Thanksgiving may give danger. Salmonella-wise. And sickening if careful we are not. So Susan and I have some suggestions to keep you safe this holiday time, but in case you do get food poisoning, you can call Susan the personal injury attorney and she'll sue the crap out of your old aunt Maddie for illness making you.

Any way, here's a rules of simple list to follow of precautions.

1)your hands you should be washing again and many
2)the raw and the cooked, go together they should not
3)cold is cold hot is hot. there is no middle
4)leftovers store not in big pot. use small one.
5)best temp for fridge is 40 degrees. hotter is badder.
6)cutting board for separate meat do not use same as vegetables.

But hey, not to worry overmuch! Have constant celebrating! And if salmonella you be having, call Susan B. Ramsey, West Palm Beach, FL personal injury attorney at (561) 686-1800 or susan@palmbeachtrialattorney.net.

-- Gail Shepherd

Ever since news broke that a Port St. Lucie man beat his girlfriend with a sandwich, we've been waiting...waiting...to learn exactly what was his weapon of choice.

The Port St. Lucie Police Department is not about to give such clues away. But whatever the sandwich in question was, it failed to achieve lethal force.

That begs the question: How can one design a Killer Sandwich?

I just love ethics questions, and lucky for me, there's an unending supply of morality dramas in the food biz. Like, for instance, is it ethical to put "grouper" on your menu when all you've got in the deep freezer is panga or swai, as dozens of restaurants in South Florida have been doing? (thanks for the tips, Channel 10 and Menu Pages). For example, we received a letter this week from a reader curious why a certain Deerfield restaurant was always packed with police and firefighters, to whit:

This past week the Miami Herald’s “Diet and Nutrition” page featured a “Nutrition Quiz” that touted the benefits of niacin. These include raising “good” HDL cholesterol by as much as 35% -- “plus, it purportedly helps your skin and hair”. What specific foods does this quiz -- which “purportedly” is geared towards steering readers towards better health -- recommend as being healthy because of high niacin content? Cheerios, Snickers, instant coffee, chicken liver, braised moose liver and KFC original recipe breast meat. The idea is, I suppose, that after dying prematurely from eating all of these horrible foods, as family and friends file past your open casket they will marvel on how great your skin and hair look.

-- Lee Klein

Rat: It's What's For Dinner

From today forward, whenever I'm worrying about the questionable sanitation practices of my local restaurants and fast food chains, I'll only have to remember today's breaking story of the Wolverhampton Pappu Sweet Center. The owner was discovered by police broiling up some kebabs while the corpse of one of his employees lay on a couch nearby.

But that's not even the worst of it. The story contains all the characteristics of good drama: Man vs. Animal, Man vs. The Elements: A dead rat found under a cooking pot, a smelly piece of meat dripping blood and clotted with flies. I only wish the BBC had gotten some reaction shots from former customers before police shut the place down.

-- Gail Shepherd

Question:
What yummy treat from a national ice cream chain contains this delectable list of ingredients?

Ingredients: reduced fat milk, heath bar crunch ice cream (cream, nonfat milk, caramel ribbon (corn syrup, sweetened condensed whole milk (milk, sugar), water, high fructose corn syrup, butter (cream, salt), propylene glycol, sodium alginate, salt, natural and artificial vanilla flavors, potassium sorbate (preservative), soy lecithin, annatto color, sodium bicarbonate, propyl paraben (preservative)) , heath® bar candy pieces [milk chocolate (sugar, cocoa butter, chocolate, nonfat milk, milk fat, lactose, soy lecithin (an emulsifier), salt, and vanillin (an artificial flavoring)), sugar, palm oil, dairy butter (milk), almonds, salt, artificial flavoring, and soy lecithin], sugar, corn syrup, toffee base (sweetened condensed whole milk, high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, water, natural flavor, disodium phosphate, and salt), whey powder, cellulose gum, mono and diglycerides, guar gum, carrageenan, polysorbate 80), fudge topping (corn syrup, sugar, water, hydrogenated coconut oil, nonfat milk, cocoa (treated with alkali), modified corn starch, salt, sodium bicarbonate, disodium phosphate, potassium sorbate (a preservative), natural and artificial flavors, soy lecithin), jamoca ice cream (cream, nonfat milk, sugar, corn syrup, jamoca extract (coffee extract, sugar, potassium sorbate and methyl paraben (as preservatives)) whey, caramel color, cellulose gum, mono and diglycerides, carrageenan, polysorbate 80, carob bean gum, guar gum), caramel praline topping (corn syrup, sweetened condensed whole mil, water, sugar, modified food starch, butter, salt, propylene glycol, natural and artificial flavor, sodium citrate, xanthan gum, lecithin, potassium sorbate and propyl paraben as preservatives), hershey’s® heath® milk chocolate english toffee (milk chocolate (sugar, cocoa butter, chocolate, nonfat milk, milk fat, lactose, soy lecithin [an emulsifier], salt, and vanillin [an artificial flavoring]), sugar, palm oil, dairy butter (milk), almonds, salt, artificial flavoring, and soy lecithin), whipped cream (whipped cream (cream, milk, sugar, dextrose, nonfat dry milk, artificial flavor, mono & diglycerides, carrageenan, mixed tocopherols (vitamin e), to protect flavor, propellant: nitrous oxide).

You'd be right if you guessed that magical list is what goes into a Large Heath Shake from Baskin-Robbins. But that's hardly the worst of it. Consumerist.com recently reported that a large Heath shake also contains 2310 calories, just slightly more than than daily calorie recommendation for an average sized woman, like me.

For a minute after reading this news I actually considered trekking down to my local B&R to order one, for the sake of journalistic research, especially since BR is offering a Buy One Get One (BOGO) deal on their frozen beverages this fall ("Parents looking for low-cost family fun need look no further than Baskin-Robbins, which offers a wide variety of treats for under $5." reads the PR.) But when I got to the fat content (64 grams of saturated fat, which is 320 percent of the daily recommended intake) and the 295 milligrams of cholesterol (98 percent) or the fact that the thing contains a half pound of sugar, I just couldn't bring myself to conduct the experiment.

The consumerist does raise a good question in their report: Is this monstrosity really necessary? Yeah, we can all take responsibility for our choices, but why does this particular choice even need to be on the map?

-- Gail Shepherd

Murphy's Law works after all: No sooner then we preach the benefits Florida's clean tap water in this very publication, the hand of the Almighty descends from on high and dumps a bunch of industrial lubricant into Fort Lauderdale's water supply. Now, residents and restaurateurs alike are scrambling to pick up bottled water to drink and cook with, lest they lubricate their insides with the tainted liquid.

It's bad enough that the threat of hurricanes has everyone rushing to the store in a frenzy to buy up enough water to keep a small country afloat - but now we have to buy, buy, buy water in ideal weather too. Well, that's South Florida for you. If we're not scared about something, we're not paying attention.

But what if, for whatever reason, you can't get your hands on bottled agua?

Well, now's a great time to use up all those cans of beef stew you had brewing in your cabinets from three Hurricane seasons ago. Cook 'em up with old sterno candles and kill two birds with one stone.

Or, just substitute water you might use in a recipe with beer - nature's answer to H2O. Braise vegetables in beer for a unique flavor, and pasta boiled in beer makes its own sauce. Prego!

As far as what to do with all that Fort Lauderdale tap that's going to waste, you might want to store the stuff for the future. If bottled water shoots up past gas prices, even the tainted stuff will command some fair market value. And, in the worst case scenario, homeowners can use the slippery liquid to lube up for all those eager Wall Street bankers in the event that Congress approves their 700 billion dollar bailout. Now that's some truly scary stuff.

-- John Linn

You could be he.

I figure I'm getting too fat, drunk, and impossibly snotty to hold this job much longer, so I hereby give readers a heads up. If you're planning to try to oust me from my oystershell- and hamhock-encrusted throne as Food Critic at Broward-Palm Beach New Times, there's a handy wiki how-to I'd like to bring to your attention:

How To Become A Food Critic

And you'd better freaking start this morning, because according to the advice rolled out in this Wiki you're gonna need a degree from the Culinary Institute of America, an MFA from the Iowa Writer's Workshop, plus the indiscriminate appetite of a piranha and the self-discipline of a yogi, not to mention the bank roll of a Warren Buffet to ever dream of snatching MY dream job out from under my ample butt.

There's quite a lot to ponder here, with varying degrees of horror and amusement, but a few of my favorites include:

A friend of mine brought me a bagful of Russian candy from Brighton Beach, and after tasting it I've decided I'm going to save it for the Halloween trick or treaters. I never have candy to give away on Halloween, and I find myself more often than not cowering in a darkened bedroom as the knocks on my front door become ever more violent. They know I'm home, don't they?

Well this year the little bastards are in for a REAL surprise. I particularly like the one called Kapa-Kym, with the camels on the wrapper -- what do you suppose the neighborhood mommies are going to make of THAT?

One could only wish they came in flavors like "borscht" or "coal," but alas, they just taste like really stale, cheaply manufactured artificially flavored corn oil.

And just in case you forgot that there's a Youtube video on every conceivable subject:

-- Gail Shepherd