Personal

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Trader Joe’s Response To My Claim of Bad Almond Butter

Trader Joe, or, rather, a third party somehow affiliated with them, responded to my email about their bad almond butter.

I am not impressed:

Good Evening Ms. Crothers,

Thank you for notifying us of you concern “It appears that this batch of almond butter should have unfortunately been included in your recent almond butter recall.  I came down with a case of mild food poisoning on January 12th and through a process of elimination have determined its the almond butter”.

[Pause here to state that my email was very long and detailed exactly how I determined that it was the almond butter and what my symptoms were.]

During production of our products we collect samples for microbiological testing, which are tested by an external third party laboratory.  The microbiological results for the date code provided are within specification.

Please contact me if you have any questions.

Regards,

*** / Corporate QA Coordinator

GOLDEN BOY FOODS

Wow. Talk about a dismissive email! Who taught the QA Coordinator how to write customer response letters?! There’s no apology and no attempt at making resolution, not even a coupon for my trouble. I took the time to write them and shared personal information because I felt there was a possible public health risk. I haven’t shopped much at Trader Joe’s (rarely in an area that has one), but this sort of response guarantees that I won’t be setting foot in one of their stores again.

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Why I Don’t Have a PayPal ‘Donate’ Button On My Blog

I’m frequently asked why I don’t have a PayPal ‘donate’ button on my blog. The answer is simple, PayPal doesn’t allow the button to be used for anything but charitable purposes.  As I wrote in my How You Can Support This Site post, I don’t consider donations to the blog to be charity and PayPal certainly wouldn’t, so there goes the donation button option! Unfortunately, their donate button is the only one that allows the purchaser to set their own price.

I was going to leave it at that, but I’ve gotten a lot of requests for the donation buttons over the years and I’ve figured out a workaround.

As many of you know, I’ve written a number of ebooks. If you go to my ebooks page, you’ll notice that I have a number of ‘add to cart’ buttons. These come from my online store manager. I was able to go there and create a product called ‘support this site’ and get an add to cart button that will take you to a page where you can put in a donation amount and then checkout by PayPal. You can find this button at the top of my updated How You Can Support This Site post.

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Well, It Finally Happened

Since Monday evening, I have been… unwell. Unwell of the sort that is associated with Mexico. You know, involving digestion, commonly known as la turista or Montezuma’s Revenge. My digestion is always terrible, but this was exceptional and obviously food related.

It took three days to identify the culprit.

Was it something from a restaurant or a food cart? Nope.

Chicken from the butcher shop? Nope.

Vegetables or fruit? Nope.

Oh, I’ve got it! Bad water! Nope…

As it turns out, the culprit was a bad jar of almond butter from Trader Joe’s purchased in the United States! While this specific batch was not mentioned in the recent recall, I guess it should have been. I’ve contacted Trader Joe’s to let them know.

I’m fine, just feeling a little weak, hence my exhaustion after climbing El Faro yesterday. I’m sticking to bland foods (lots of tortillas, rice, and plain pasta) and drinking gallons of Electrolit, a rehydration solution that is very easy to find and which I know I need because I’m not finding it sweet in the least (my favourite flavour is pineapple).

I have to appreciate the humour and irony that I came to Mexico and got a mild food poisoning that I could have had in Canada or the U.S!

The moral of the story is, leave scary mass produced food back home and come enjoy the fresh and unprocessed local delicacies Mexico has to offer!

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Good Coffee at Long Last

Rico’s Cafe is just a couple of block’s from my cousin’s hotel and is run by an American. My cousin is even more of a coffee snob than I am and raved about the coffee and all the beans she was bringing home, so I was eager try it out! Coffee was one place I was not too snobby or cheap to deal with in Gringoland because Mexicans just don’t have a coffee culture.

She had a 16 oz drip coffee with a shot of espresso and I went for just the drip coffee. They make it in a manner similar to a French press, so you get a mouthful of grinds at the end if you’re not careful, something I’m used since I’ve been doing French press coffee for so long.

The coffee wasn’t fantastic, but it was still the best coffee I’ve had since finishing up my Canadian coffee way back in October! It had so much potential, but there was a bit of a soapy taste to it, for lack of a better description, probably something to do with how they wash their cups. Not enough to be off putting or to stop me from enjoying it, but it wasn’t the perfect cup of coffee I’d been expecting this morning.  Still, it was a huge step above anything I’ve had in months and I savoured every mouthful!

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I then put in an order for beans, with my cousin recommending Veracruz dark roast. I got half a pound for about 68 pesos and had them grind them for me. The smell of the beans through the bag was divine. I couldn’t stop smelling it all the way home!

I’m enjoying a cup of it now and trying not to weep with joy. 🙂 Oh, real coffee at very long last. I hope that what I get at the more convenient Olas Altas café I was recommended will be just as good, but at least now I know that, worst case, I can get coffee for 28 pesos round trip! 🙂

Oh, and two giant coffees (one with a shot of espresso) and a bag of beans was just 142 pesos! I used to pay almost 20CAD for an equivalent amount of beans in Gatineau!

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New Faces

A little thing I’ve been doing since I got to Isla is giving printing services to a lovely couple who are teaching English to students in the Colonia (‘slum’). It’s just a few pages a week and helps them out a bit. I got an order from them last night, printed it this morning, and took it over to their place this afternoon.

They had friends visiting who have built a house in the Colonia part of town! Gringos can’t own land in communities along the water, so the land is held in their attorney’s name and they get a 99-year free lease that allows them to do whatever they want with the property, including selling it. They have been building a house and say they have all the services, including garbage pickup and at home deliveries of bread, water, and produce. I’ll have to go out there at some point to check out their place!

Not wanting to intrude, I had planned to just be in and out, but we all got talking and I finally got worn down enough to accept a beer. 🙂 Other topics covered included geocaching, something many people have told me I should look into, and buses in Maz. I’m really tempted to try the bus to go to my cousin tomorrow as it’s a 10th of the cost of taking a pulmonía, but I’m going to be on a tight schedule so I’ll probably save that for another day.

I’m always glad to meet other Gringos who prefer to live in Mexico than in expat communities as I get a lot of information about living here cheaply. For example, I was told that I really must try the weekend chicken lady’s offerings… 😀