"Mystery Meat"

Drive-by meat (one way or another) (0.00 / 0)

Schwan's has a long track record of home-delivering prepackaged foods that is reportedly pretty good... but buying food from a truck that came out of nowhere? Bleaurgh. I'm reminded of a fake ad I produced many years ago at a radio station in another part of the country, for Ronnie's Road Kill Restaurant, down by the swamp off the county road. The tag line was "When you eat at Ronnie's, you'll say, 'Mmmm, that's road kill!'"

Er,sorry. As to your serious point, yes, I'm faintly skeeved by meat of unknown provenance. I'm very glad that there's a growing local-meat movement in Vermont.

I stopped eating at fast-food chains (not that I ever did it that often) after reading an item in Bird Talk magazine about sharing food with pet birds. Members of the parrot family are omnivores, and they often enjoy getting a tidbit off your plate. But the magazine warned not to feed them any fast-food burgers, because the chains have standards for acceptable levels of e. coli. They're satisfied if their burgers contain some fecal contamination as long as it's not enough to sicken a person. But birds are much smaller, and can get seriously ill from a slightly-tainted burger. It's so reassuring to know that Mickey D's goal is not to eliminate filth, but to keep it down to manageable levels.  

"Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible."  --Frank Zappa

---

by: jvwalt @ Thu Feb 23, 2012 at 14:31:31 PM UTC

I bought from a truck once (0.00 / 0)

A truck stopped by my house once.  It was a marked freezer truck and they said that they had an order that the buyer claimed they never asked for.  The driver and handler (there were two of them) wanted to sell the order before they headed back to Maine.  They asked for $400, but we talked them down to $200.  They said that their company was a subscription service and they left us with brochures from the company.

We bought four boxes, each one a different type, they were well and solidly frozen, no signs of having been thawed and re-frozen.  We never saw them again.

Boy, were they good!

---

by: Comrade Rutherford @ Thu Feb 23, 2012 at 15:21:50 PM UTC

Sounds familiar (0.00 / 0)

Yeah, we did that ... once. Still have some tuna steaks and chicken breasts in the freezer. Not bad. Paid too much, but learned something.

NanuqFC
You grow up the day you have your first real laugh yourself. ~  Ethel Barrymore

---

by: NanuqFC @ Thu Feb 23, 2012 at 19:28:11 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

While this woman's experience sounds truly irresponsible, (0.00 / 0)

I do recall that, when we first moved to St. Albans in the mid-eighties, a refrigerator truck would pull up into the shopping center in front of the Grand Union every Saturday afternoon in summer.  Locals routinely bought their fresh seafood hauled from Maine out of the back of that truck.  It was wonderful!

A few years later, the trucking business became "Jeff's Maine Seafood" and the rest is history.

---

by: Sue Prent @ Thu Feb 23, 2012 at 15:24:55 PM UTC