Thursday, May 10, 2012

Sliiiiime In The Supermarket Sushi!

Houston's ABC-13 was home of the late great Marvin Zindler, a reporter and executive who was famous (infamous?) for many things. For example, Marvin was the character depicted in The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas, the newsman whose dogged determination brought an end to the Chicken Ranch. But that's not what brought Marvin to mind today.

Marvin used to read the local health inspector's restaurant journal on the air once a week. He called it the "restaurant rat and roach report," and the classic phrase with which he ended every segment (because in a big city there is never a shortage of violators) was

"SLIIIIIME IN THE ICE MACHINE!"

Well, it's not in the ice machine, but Lindsay Beyerstein of duly Noted has found red sliiiiime, um, I mean, red slime, this time in supermarket sushi. And it is at least as disgusting as the "pink slime" about which so much has been said on evening news segments lately.

I doubt that veggie sushi is affected by this revelation; I presume no one uses tuna skeleton scrapings to supplement the avocado sushi at Whole Paycheck. But the carnivores among you may want to take notice.

6 comments:

  1. Oh my, I remember Marvin Zindler from when I lived in Houston years ago! My crazy Aunt Shirley loved his segment and always turned it on.

    I've pretty much given up on supermarket meat. When we had our desert cookout last month (the proximate cause of my spring migration), the cook had the dickens of a time finding chicken worthy of marinade. Everything was saline-injected, which is worthless because saline-injected won't take up marinade. I ate hamburgers a couple of times while I was out there -- but only veggie burgers, because the "beef" hamburgers will make you sick. The only beef hamburgers I will eat nowadays are from In'n'Out, which doesn't buy hamburger meat -- they buy cows, and slaughter said cows in their own slaughterhouse and ship the meat fresh each day from their slaughterhouse to their restaurants (which is why you don't have In'n'Out in Texas, you're too far from their slaughterhouse).

    So anyhow, I'm still not ready to become a vegetarian... but it seems that our industrial food system is conspiring to make me one anyhow, like it or not, because what passes as "meat" in the system is now so disgusting as to be beyond nausea-inducing, it's downright puke-inducing, yo.

    - Badtux the Reluctantly Non-Carnivorous Penguin

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  2. BadTux, I am someone who actually decided consciously to become a vegetarian. I think it was in about 1987; I studied at a music institute at Oberlin one summer and the co-op I stayed in was all-veg (not to be confused with VegAll... sheesh!). I liked sprout-eating (figuratively; I don't really eat sprouts) so well that I brought it home with me.

    I miss Marvin Zindler. I didn't know him personally, but he had, as you know, a reputation as a decent, caring human being behind his screen persona; my back-when landlord was a lodge brother with him, and had positive things to say about him.

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  3. Steve, there's a lot of Southern dishes that simply don't taste right without a small hunk of salt pork to add fat and flavor, and there's a lot of Cajun dishes which require at least something approximating spicy pork sausage or spiced pork ("tasso") to taste right. So even though I eat much less meat than I used to eat (due to the simple fact that what's sold today is so disgusting), I'm in no danger of becoming a pure vegetarian anytime soon... but steaks? Hamburgers? NYET! Well, other than the *very* occasional In'n'Out burger, which, as I mentioned, is *not* industrial hamburger meat... but a) it's bad for me, and b) it's expensive ($10 for a hamburger meal?!), so ...

    - Badtux the Carnivore Penguin

    ReplyDelete
  4. BadTux, what saves me (and Stella too, I think) from relapsing is that the "veggie meats" available these days in grocery stores and restaurants both are vastly superior to those available 10, 20, especially 25 years ago. Brands like Morningstar Farms, Amy's, and Quorn are staples around our house. You can even get items to use in dishes of your own, e.g., veggie "meatballs" for use in spaghetti... the flavor in real meatballs is all in the spices anyway, so veggie balls don't taste all that much different.

    I never urge anyone to become a full-blown sprout-eater. You have to come to it on your own terms, and no one else knows what you need and want as well as you do. As for saving critters, some famous vegetarian once said "we eat vegetables because they don't scream as loud when you kill them." :-)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Oh Crap, the spicy tuna rolls are my favorite thing from Whole Paychecks sushi counter. Reset!

    ReplyDelete
  6. fallenmonk, I'd be very, very surprised if Whole Paycheck used tuna skeleton scrapings in its sushi; it's not their style to skimp on quality. Once in a while, even still, I go in our WP about 4 blocks away, just to remind myself what life in the middle class was like in the old days... but I go there with a list and a budget, and stick to both.

    ReplyDelete

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