E tu, fish sticks?
By Gina Spadafori
March 3, 2008
I ate fish sticks almost every Friday dinner of my young life, being of an age old enough to remember when the Catholic Church forbid the eating of meat on Fridays.
Heck, we didn’t need the Church to suggest a menu. Fish sticks and ketchup were pretty much the default meal any time my parents didn’t feel up to cooking something. (And I must say it was far better than the Velveeta-enhanced “Alice Garrett’s Casserole” my mom also made rather frequently. Who is Alice Garrett? No idea, and her recipe doesn’t even seem to have made it onto the Web. But my stomach lurches at the very thought of her name. It was that bad.)
No, it’s not pet-related (except that I always shared my fish sticks with my childhood cat, Cali), but fish sticks (actually, battered filets)! Recalled! For “possible adulteration” with “pills”!
!!! (Whoops. Key stuck.)
I can’t take it. I just can’t. Here’s the FDA on it.
“pills” (?!)
Could they be *less* specific? [/sarcasm]
Comment by emily — March 3, 2008 @ 11:56 am
yeah, wouldn’t you like to know the story behind that?
Comment by Gina Spadafori — March 3, 2008 @ 12:03 pm
Everything’s fine - The FDA inspected a plant with a similar name in China, the melamine was mislabeled, there were 5 USDA inspectors on the job…
Sorry, I’ve gone punchy.
Comment by slt — March 3, 2008 @ 1:38 pm
Maybe the fishies had a cold and they were treating them postmortem.
Comment by 2CatMom — March 3, 2008 @ 2:09 pm
…or maybe its a new marketing plan….put an aspirin in each fish and you have…
“The only fish sticks that protects you against heart attacks.”
Comment by 2CatMom — March 3, 2008 @ 2:10 pm
Watched a show on Discovery Channel about how companies make fish sticks. Big blocks of frozen fish mush from China are fed into machines that slice, dice and bread the product. It was fairly disgusting. Who knows what could have been contaminated at any time in the manufacturing.
Comment by C.L.H. — March 3, 2008 @ 4:25 pm
Hmmmm … so maybe Alice Garrett’s Yuk-R-Role (as I used to call it, irritating the heck out of my mom) isn’t so bad, considering the alternatives. Except, well, Velveeta is more Cheez than cheese.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — March 3, 2008 @ 8:11 pm
Fish sticks now? Could be anything next. And there’s no warning!
It seems lately I just haven’t been too motivated to do grocery shopping. As I walk past all the processed food, I just wonder what it REALLY is and where it came from. Am finding my appetite is greatly reduced when food shopping, probably a good thing anyway, but almost to the point of not wanting to buy anything I see in the standard market. This will be the summer of The Garden. I didn’t get to plant it last year as we had just moved in early summer.
I know we have local beef and chicken, and we can mosey on down to the harbor and get freshly caught fish right off the boats. The farmers market will be another source for favs I won’t be growing in The Garden.
And while shopping today, instead of generic who-knows-where-it-comes-from, I bought American made health products.
Wow, my way of shopping, eating, cooking, caring for myself and family and fur-family has changed since 2007!
Comment by Nadine L. — March 3, 2008 @ 8:37 pm
Pre-pet food recall, I used to serve “Friday night Fish Fries” with fish sticks and french fries to the family. Post-recall, I read the labels and saw that the fish was all caught in China, so we haven’t eaten processed fish since.
I admit that I was missing my fish sticks until I saw the “pills” in the FDA recall — even my cousin who works at the grocery store and actually received this recall (they pulled the fish sticks today) doesn’t have any scoop on just what type of “pills” these were.
Comment by Dorene — March 3, 2008 @ 8:49 pm
Snope shas this: http://www.snopes.com/food/warnings/gortons.asp
I may be a cynic but based on one report I might suspect something I will eupehemistically call an idiosyncratic effect. I am not sure how whole pills would get in their during processing so there was one or more in each fillet in that packet but apparently no one else to date has found any at all?
Comment by emily — March 17, 2008 @ 10:05 am