Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut

I did something really stupid. I signed up for a daily notification from the FDA regarding all current food recalls, why is this dumb you may wonder… it’s dumb because almost every day I have between 5 and 15 emails from the FDA now telling me how incredibly horrible our nation’s food supply is! Okay not all the food is bad, but seriously I’m so frustrated, my anxiety has gone through the roof, every time I buy anything now I wonder, “will I get an email tomorrow telling me I’ve just poisoned myself by eating this?”

I am amazed at how many things get recalled, not only the peanut scandal, which still just pisses me right off, but then pistachios! This one really upset me. Since peanuts had been recalled, at our semiannual Costco shopping trip my husband and I splurged and bought “the biggen” which to non- David and Shauna people is our way of saying the mother load of all bags of pistachios! We love pistachios, and what is even better- our daughter loves pistachios. So being the brilliant folks we are we splurge and buy “the biggen” and put them in storage containers…it was all very Martha Stewart, err maybe closer to Rachel Ray, anyhow we were proud of ourselves. Not only are we being wise with our money, we are being healthy by eating nuts, and we are finally using the awesome food storage containers we bought a year ago that hadn’t been used yet...okay how many birds did I just kill?!

So we buy the nuts, we eat the nuts, we love the nuts, and then it happens, I get an email recall notice from the FDA, damn. So I being paranoid write Costco an email:

“We bought Pistachios at your Salem store, I don’t know the brand name, because I threw out the bag and put them into a storage container (had to throw that in, I wonder why on earth I am so proud of that?) Now I don’t know if these pistachios are part of the recall or not, and frankly I’m pregnant and craving pistachios, so if you could let me know it would be greatly appreciated.”(Yes I seriously wrote the part about being pregnant.)

I get a response the next day,

“The pistachios you bought are not part of the recall and have been cleared by the FDA.”

Thank you Costco. So we continue to eat the nuts, we continue to love the nuts, the nuts are almost gone… and in the mail comes a lovely notice from Costco.

“A product you bought on this date has been recalled; please return any unused portion to the Costco where you purchased the item.” WHAT????!!!!!!!

So first of all I was a little ticked off, after going to the lengths of emailing Costco and all, but I understood that the pistachio recall was in its early evolutionary process, if you will. Then I thought about how wonderful Costco was to send me a notice, I don’t think any other retailer would have done that, how thoughtful! But then I start to worry, see we loved the nuts so much that seriously out of a 6 lb bag there were like 2 cups left. What if they won’t let us return them? What if there is nothing wrong, I mean we ate almost the whole bag and nothing happened, surely we could polish these off also? But of course since I am pregnant and have a daughter we decide we will return them and since we couldn’t finish them we will be happy with getting our money back.

So I pour them into a bag, I bring the notice (we didn’t even have the receipt) and on our next trip to Salem I return the pistachios. I was embarrassed thinking that they would either say I couldn’t return them since there were hardly any left, or that there was no proof that these indeed were the supposed infected pistachios since I had disposed of the original bag. But good old Costco, God bless them, the girl behind the counter took my zip lock bag, took my recall notice and handed me a full refund! Wow! Costco has just scored major points with me, I couldn’t believe that they accepted literally less than probably 1/5 of the original purchase and still gave me a full refund.

Although I had a wonderful experience with Costco and the recall process I am still a bit perturbed about our food industry and the fact that it seems like every day I’m being bombarded with recall notices, I mean is no one paying attention to what is going on in the food processing plants? Do I need to start my own garden and raise my own livestock to guarantee that my family won’t get sick? Must I plant my own green olive trees so that the pimentos will not contain bits of broken glass? True story! Ouch!

Maybe, and a lot of people would argue that it would be a great idea to be totally self sufficient and take care of all of my food needs, I have thought about this plenty, and actually have grand plans of one day not being pregnant and being able to plant a garden once again… ahh dreams.

But I guess instead of being so freaked out by all the food recalls, I should be excited! I should be grateful that our government has a system to check the quality of our food, I should be excited that our government no longer (fingers are crossed) allows the dumping of potentially dangerous chemicals which will pollute the ground water and crops and various other elements of our ecology. I am thankful for that, but I am still concerned.

I’m concerned that our government is spending so much money and time on silly programs that they are ignoring a huge segment of important safety protocols like making sure that companies are producing safe foods BEFORE there has to be a recall, I mean wouldn’t that make more sense? I know there are so many companies and just simply not enough FDA employees to keep up, but maybe instead of throwing millions of stimulus dollars toward Hollywood, or millions toward investigating the pig odor in Iowa, maybe we should actually put money toward the FDA and keeping our food supply safe. I mean this isn’t rocket science… hmm with our government maybe that is part of the problem?

All I know is that I hope something will happen soon, maybe even something as foreign and crazy as more accountability from the food industry, because damn it I’m pregnant, and sometimes I feel like a nut and sometimes I don’t, but if they start recalling almonds I will seriously go postal, I mean is nothing sacred?!