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Harrison's avatar

Love this! I’m Harrison, an ex fine dining industry line cook. My stack "The Secret Ingredient" adapts hit restaurant recipes (mostly NYC and L.A.) for easy home cooking.

check us out:

https://thesecretingredient.substack.com

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Cute Boots RocketCat's avatar

Just tell them there is testosterone-lowering estrogen in the poop.

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Michelle Albanes-Davis's avatar

Ohhhhh that’s a solid strategy

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Michelle MacLean's avatar

OMFG. with the whole tariff thing, there’s been a major “buy Canadian” movement up here. There is no fucking way I’m buying American produce if I can help it. Citrus though….we can’t grow it. I can at least use soap on it before I zest and cut. Thankfully my kale can grow all winter, albeit slowly. It’s starting to really flourish now. It’s too damn hot in LA for it Michelle, but might go well where you are moving to. Mine will start to bolt on me the minute it gets into the mid-70s. Time for me to start to really cook by season and preserve/freeze summer produce while it’s abundant.

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Michelle Albanes-Davis's avatar

Seriously, it’s only going to get worse down and our food is jeopardy. It’s absolutely a canning summer lol

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Merritt McKeon's avatar

Thank you for posting this information and frightening post! Whew. So much crap so little time. I continue to push the boundaries of making food from scratch. We are building a new greenhouse this week and have a 3rd one ready to build but are looking at just where to put it. Still need to get seeds planted. But making bread, making vegan suasage and soymilk and stuff has kept us happy and well fed. We get much of our produce from a local Persian grocery store, not the big beautiful one 5 miles away… the smaller one that just renovated, which is sort of walking distance. Ethnic food stores sometimes have the coolest stuff.

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Michelle Albanes-Davis's avatar

Absolutely agree. It’s time to support small grocers and grow as much as we can. It’s too crazy out there

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Merritt McKeon's avatar

Yes and encourage others, it’s like a network of growers and cookers and stashers. Life skills and joy not just fighting and feeling hopeless… we can make change just by how we eat and procure food and other stuff.

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Dan's avatar

Michelle, yesterday's blog was brilliant. Such a serious topic and a troubled time, yet so many turns of phrase that cracked me up. I shared it with a good friend and we talked about how the piece could be so upsetting and so damn funny at the same time.

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Michelle Albanes-Davis's avatar

Hahaha, thank you so much Dan. It was a fine line to walk but I'm glad I kinda pulled it off!

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Suzanne's avatar

Thank you for sharing this information.

I remember watching a documentary about Salinas and waning people to avoid their lettuce. The factory farm that was very close, posed a great chance for contamination.

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Kate's avatar

Taylor Farms was already on my shit list (so to speak) after they hosted a fundraiser for Ron DeSantis in 2023... not only an appalling person, but his policies are diametrically opposed to maintaining a cheap workforce, which makes no sense whatsoever in Monterey County.

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Michelle Albanes-Davis's avatar

Logic and empathy are on life support in the US right now

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Erin Contour's avatar

I read your notes about washing "pre-washed" lettuce etc. in bags... and have been. Then I read an article in a science'y online magazine that said (basically) "well... yeah, that doesn't work. You can't remove [insert bad stuff] by rinsing and all you're doing is spreading [insert bad stuff] around by trying to wash it off." They recommended only purchasing head lettuce / cabbage etc. because there was less surface area to contaminate. Seems like there is no good way to 'win' this and a lot of ways to get sick.

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Michelle Albanes-Davis's avatar

Yeah the bagged mixes are the worst offenders. We’re all much better off buying whole heads. We’re stuck between a rock and a hard place.

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Kat Ketterer's avatar

I'm going to sow some lettuces in my garden patch. I haven't had any luck with lettuces, so far. 🤷

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Michelle Albanes-Davis's avatar

I’m ok with lettuces but I can’t grow kale or cabbage to save my life for some reason

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Scott's avatar

Of all the stupid shit this administration has done, appointing RFK Jr and firing 10K at HHS are the most stupid, shortsighted, and fucking dangerous things they have done. People will die because of these two things. 🤬

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Peter Wills's avatar

Absolutely 💯 agree Scott

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Michelle Albanes-Davis's avatar

Absolutely, so many people will get sick and die for no damn reason. I hope the reckoning is on its way.

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Dena.  :)'s avatar

Buy local, love your local farmers, wash your food n hands

And cutting boards

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Michelle Albanes-Davis's avatar

Yes! Washing the cutting board is so important

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John Lovie's avatar

Not the first time for the Salinas area. I remember this one from 2019, https://archive.cdc.gov/www_cdc_gov/ecoli/2019/o157h7-11-19/index.html, but a search on Salinas E. Coli turns up many more.

I drove through Salinas last week and passed a couple of CAFOs. One featured a dead cow just feet from 101, bloated, with its feet in the air, and others standing in the manure around it.

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Michelle Albanes-Davis's avatar

That drive is brutal. When we’d pass them as a kid I’d cry because the cows had no grass. It’s just so so terrible.

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John Lovie's avatar

Yes, and I5 between Stockton & Bakersfield is even worse, to the point that I try to avoid driving that way. We have the same in WA now, along I82 through the Yakima Valley. We even have the only valley fever cluster outside of the Central Valley. Yay us! And up here anyway, it's all for cheese.

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Scott's avatar

The Cowschwitz along I5 is horrific 😢

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Michelle Albanes-Davis's avatar

Straight up

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Michelle Albanes-Davis's avatar

Yeah, driving down the 5 during a heatwave will break your heart. So many dead cows. I’m sorry it’s up in Washington too. I still believe it will get better one day.

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John Lovie's avatar

I sure hope so. For all the fuss around almonds, irrigated alfalfa for cow feed uses way more water. As Marc Reisner wrote in the revised edition of Cadillac Desert, "California doesn't have a water problem, it has a cow problem."

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Nicki's avatar

It's not just run off either they have been using the "sludge" known as biosolids 🤮 as fertilizer on food crops for decades. This is why I always wash bagged salad, even if it says "ready to use". Oh and now we find out it also contains PFAS 😭

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Michelle Albanes-Davis's avatar

It’s like a game we can’t win!

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Nicki's avatar

Yes absolutely😫 so frustrating.

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Maria Rodale's avatar

Thank you for this.

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SueJ's avatar

I'm waiting for Brain Worm Boy to announce that eating shit cures autism. Wash your hands, wash your food, perps!

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Michelle Albanes-Davis's avatar

I never stop thinking about worm.

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