For once, West Philly food suppliers have gotten something right.

Across the country, thousands of supermarkets are recalling bags of spinach due to an E. coli outbreak which has sickened more than 100 people and resulted in one fatality. The tainted spinach has recently been linked to central California, but the spinach has since been distributed all throughout the country and E.Coli afflictions have erupted in 19 states.

(urbanext.uiuc.edu)

The Food and Drug Administration has urged consumers to refrain from eating any spinach products until further notice and requested sellers to pull all spinach products off the shelves.

Is there any of the tainted spinach in West Philadelphia? The first stop on my spinach search was Fresh Grocer. After weeding my way through carrots, cucumbers, and bagged salads, I discovered that all of the spinach bins had been discarded.

I then made my way to Houston Market and Au Bon Pain. The Houston market salad staff had also rid their premises of all spinach, including their mixed greens, which contained “traces of spinach” Before the E coli outbreak.

I was almost certain I had found some spinach in the pre-made salads at Au Bon Pain. They offer a small selection of salads, including the Sonoma salad (pictured below),

(Caroline Pearsall)

which, according to its label, contains spinach, smoked turkey, gorgonzola, oranges and bacon. I bought the salad to investigate its contents. I soon realized that I was unsuccessful in my bust once again, for upon opening the container, I realized that the spinach had been replaced with Romaine lettuce.

Despite my failure to bust any spinach sellers, I decided to make one last stop at Supreme FoodMarket, a relatively new supermarket on 43rd and Walnut. Looking like some kind of deranged and obsessive salad eater, I ruffled through all the bins of bagged lettuce, where I at last found what I had been looking for–a bag of FreshExpress baby spinach. Trying to be discrete as possible, I began removing my digital camera from my bag in order to obtain proof of the store’s mistake, but I was immediately put to a halt. A deli worker bustled over to see what I was up to. She looked at me strangely and said, “Honey, why you taking pictures of lettuce?”

Unsure of whether or not I should tell her about my mission, I eventually caved in and told her I simply wanted to take a picture of their last bag of spinach. With a quizzical look on her face, she removed the bag from the shelf and walked away to throw it out. Thanks to the deli worker at the Supreme Food Market, West Philadelphia is now entirely spinach free.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 19th, 2006 at 2:51 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.