USDA Inspected golf balls in your supermarket freezer

It was on the news recently – a North Carolina company recalled bags of frozen hash brown potatoes because there could be traces of — not listeria, not mold, not even ptomaine— but material from golf balls.

Golf balls?

According to the report, McCain Foods USA's recall notice on the US Food & Drug Administration site says the hash browns could be "contaminated with extraneous golf ball materials" that "may have been inadvertently harvested with potatoes used to make this product."

I’ve always wondered where golf balls came from. For all I know, they grow on trees. It seems they’re harvested, in this instance, along with potatoes. Nice crop of golf balls growing over there. I wonder how many golf balls they get per bushel?

Now I’m not much of a cook, but I would think I could whip up a batch of hash browns without involving a trip to the country club. You shred some potatoes, add some onions and salt and pepper and fry them.

I’ve got one of those mandolin gadgets for shredding and slicing. Seems to me that a potato would slide over the blade fairly easily, but a golf ball? Not so much. Once when I was slicing a cucumber my finger slid over the blade easily enough, which required a trip to the doctor. But I would think a golf ball might bend the blade and bounce off the counter. Even a sharp knife would be no match for a golf ball.

Maybe you have to boil them first, you think?

This whole situation brings up many questions. Did someone check the golf balls for eyes when they were planting potatoes? I can understand mistaking a golf ball for a chunk of seed potato. They’re about the same size.

Who plants potatoes that close to a golf course? How many golfers are so bad at the game their balls land in the potato patch? I know from nothing about the game of golf, but I’ve never heard of a ball landing in the spuds although landing in the rough sounds familiar.

Didn’t anyone notice during the harvest that some potatoes had Spalding stamped on them? Didn’t anyone in the kitchen notice some of those spuds were already peeled and had dimples on them when they came in from the field?  

"Consumption of these products may pose a choking hazard or other physical injury to the mouth," says the notice of the voluntary recall.

I wonder if the golf balls are gluten free?

There have been no reported injuries, according to the company.

I’ll bet the cooks and the quality control inspectors are really teed off about this.  

April brings on that gut feeling

April seems like it should be such a fun month. It gets warmer in April, flowers bloom, a lot of kittens are born.

Those who make up holidays and celebrations choose April for such fun things as Adopt a Greyhound Month, Informed Women Month, Holy Humor Month, and the month is also set aside to commemorate pecans, jazz appreciation, kites, licorice, pets and poetry.

April can be pretty somber too. TS Eliot wrote that April is the cruelest month. April also acknowledges a lot of serious issues: autism, child abuse, cancer control, Parkinson’s Disease.

And IBS. Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Crohn’s Disease is an irritable bowel disease, and it’s not just irritable – Crohn’s is downright mean.

I know because I have it.

Crohn’s or any IBS doesn’t seem to warrant any pastel ribbons to bring public attention to it. There is no cure for Crohn’s Disease. It can be subdued for a while, but it does not go away. It only gets worse. And the treatments are expensive.

Irritable bowel diseases like Crohn’s are painful. You feel like you have a belly full of bricks crashing against each other. They can disguise themselves as other diseases at first; they can make other diseases you might have worse. They are life-changing.

So here it is April, and the birds are singing, and flowers are blooming, but Crohn’s and other IBS patients are keeping an eye out for the nearest available bathroom. We miss a lot of some of the more subtle niceties of life like fresh fruits and vegetables, anything with fiber; hotdogs; bacon, pizza. It’s hard to plan a picnic or a hike unless you know where the Porta-Potties are.

Even if you’re inclined toward bathroom humor, there isn’t much to laugh about with IBS.

Some advanced cases require chemotherapy treatment, like cancer but without the pastel ribbons.

Here it is April and did you know it was IBS awareness month, like you would know October is breast cancer awareness month? No one talks about it. But a lot of people have it. Some don’t know they have it.

So do yourself a favor this April. If you’re over 50, get a colonoscopy. If you’re under 50 and you have that gut feeling something might be wrong, get a colonoscopy.  Early detection is key. It’s not the most pleasant thing to do, but it’s not painful. A colonoscopy can also detect colon cancer, which is easier to stop when it’s caught early.  

Get on the web and look up the International Foundation for Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders. That organization has a Facebook page too. Look up CrohnsAndColitis.com. There’s also a Facebook page for Crohn’s Disease. And while you’re at it, check out Celiac disease, colitis, and other gut-wrenching disorders. You won’t hear much about them during April, and even less any other month, but knowing about them, and getting that colonoscopy, could make a big difference for you.