Paging Samuel L. Jackson...
Posted on 05/07/2009 12:27:43 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The sight of a severed snake's head under his broccoli made Jack Pendleton lose interest in dessert.
Pendleton said he found the head, the size of the end of his thumb, while eating Sunday at the T.G.I. Friday's in Clifton Park. The chain restaurant said it regrets the appetite-killing error. Pendleton said he has no plans to sue.
Pendleton said he ordered vegetables instead of fries with his chicken sandwich. When he started to eat his broccoli, he saw something gray on the plate he at first thought was a mushroom. "I start to turn it over. I see this gray-green patch," he said.
Next he saw a V-shape that turned out to be the mouth of a snake. "I could see these black, rotted eye sockets on the top," he said. The severed head also had bits of tendon and part of the spine attached, he said.
"I stopped eating. I told my girlfriend, 'I think this is a head,'" he said.
Pendleton snapped a photo with his cellphone camera, then summoned the waiter. He covered the dish with his hand and described his find.
"He thought I was joking until I took my hand away," Pendleton said. The waiter grabbed the plate and took it back to the kitchen, the diner said.
"The manager came over white as a sheet," said Pendleton, 28, of Ballston Lake, a senior art director for a textbook company in Clifton Park. "He explained in five years he'd never run into anything like this."
Amy Freshwater, a spokeswoman for the chain, said in an e-mailed statement the company is trying to determine what happened.
"We are taking this situation very seriously," she said. "We immediately pulled the broccoli from this restaurant and began an extensive investigation. As a precautionary measure, we pulled broccoli from all restaurants that received product from this supplier. We have since isolated the specific lot date of the broccoli in question and have now reintroduced the product in all restaurants not included in the product hold."
The supplier has been contacted to begin its own investigation, she said. "We are sending the object to an independent laboratory for testing," Freshwater said in the statement. "We have very strict and thorough safety and sanitation procedures and regret that this situation occurred in one of our restaurants."
The couple were given their meals without charge and offered the name of a regional manager, which Pendleton said he declined. He said he advised the manager he should check the kitchen to make sure the rest of the snake wasn't in someone else's meal. He also told the manager the head should have been found when the vegetables were harvested or, if it crawled into a box, before it made it into his meal.
Pendleton said he filed a complaint through the restaurant's Web site but has no plans to sue. He tried to contact the Saratoga County Health Department, he said, but he could not find contact information on its Web site. His story also was posted on the Web site the Consumerist, under the headline "Snakes on a Plate."
He and his girlfriend had planned to attend a carnival after their meals, he said, but as he pulled into the lot he decided he didn't have the stomach to go on the rides.
1/2 cup lemon juice
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon honey
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated ginger
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons minced fresh herbs—parsley, mint, thyme and/or tarragon
1/4 teaspoon salt
Pinch of freshly ground pepper
Kabobs
12 frozen katydids, locusts, or other suitably sized Orthoptera, thawed 1 red pepper, cut into 1/2-inch chunks
1 small yellow onion, cut into 8 wedges
Mix all ingredients for the marinade in a nonreactive baking dish. Add the Orthoptera, cover, and marinate overnight.
When ready to cook, remove the insects from the marinade. Pat them dry, for ease of handling. Assemble each kabob, alternately skewering the insects, red pepper, and onion wedges to create a visually interesting lineup.
Brush the grill lightly with olive oil. Cook the kabobs two or three inches above the fire, turning them every two or three minutes and basting them with additional olive oil as required. The exact cooking time will vary, depending on the kind of grill and types of insects used; however, the kabobs should cook for no longer than 8 or 9 minutes.
Note: Holding in Flavor (and Keeping Bodily Fluids Where They Belong)
Pierce the thorax and abdomen of a large-bodied edible insect with the tines of a pickle server or any small fork—a procedure easiest to perform while the insect's body is still frozen. This will allow the marinade to enter the insect, imparting its flavors while working away at the chitin from the inside. The holes don't have to be large or deep. In fact, smaller punctures are less likely to damage organ meats or permit the insect's precious bodily fluids to drain out.
Enjoy.
I know what you meant, I just couldn't resist ; )
It's estimated that the average human eats one pound (half a kilogram) of insects each year unintentionally," says Lisa Monachelli, director of youth and family programs at New Canaan Nature Center in Connecticut. For example, chocolate can have up to 60 insect fragments per 100 grams, tomato sauce can contain 30 fly eggs per 100 grams, and peanut butter can have 30 insect fragments per 100 grams (3.5 ounces), according to the FDA.
Now you can really hurl....
I’d been told about your fun facts a few months ago when I found a bunch of moths in my granola.
I needed the protein, I guess.
Didn't shock my fieldwork companion one iota either.
Didn't shock my fieldwork companion one iota either.
Maybe the gnat did have an effect. I just double-posted.
I don’t even bother to pull the sand vein out of shrimp. A little crunchy is fine with me.
I was eating salad at a Sizzler steakhouse in Dallas about 20 years ago. A black beetle the size of a June bug crawled out from under a lettuce leaf. At least I didn’t find half a beetle.
Gnats aren’t bad unless they fly straight into your throat and choke you, makes you want to barf when that happens!
Worst dining experience I have had lately was at a T.G.I. Fridays just outside Cypress Gardens in Winter Haven.
My family and I left with the uneaten meals still on the table.
Never go to another one.
lofl!
Paging Samuel L. Jackson...
Oh I’m sorry, the snake head was supposed to go in the OTHER dish!
Similar experience with Subway. I brought home a foot long tuna sub and opened half of it to add my own tomatoes, there was a long black hair on it. I picked it off and ate that half of the sandwich, opened the second half and a black bug came crawling out. I sorta lost my appetite for the second half.
“Gnats aren’t bad unless they fly straight into your throat” -—> A news reporter catches flies fly in his mouth during a story. Foul language alert. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUS6nKpddec
I can't even imagine how awful that was for this man. I would have thrown up. :o)
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