GrubGirl.

Maybe this hasn’t made it to your ears, but there’s a little salmonella outbreak happening again, and 42 states are affected. California has had 55 reported cases of this since the holidays, and the AP reports that some food service peanut butter’s been linked to the case. What’s this mean for you? The jars of Skippy you buy from the grocery store should be ok, but if you eat at a cafeteria that makes its own peanut butter cookies, I’d stay away for a little bit.

Consider yourself organized, or aspire to be? Lifehacker provides some creative tips on how to make your cooking simpler with “Kitchen Timesavers That Speed Up Dinner.” The best idea for me? Stick a conversion chart on the inside of one of your cupboards.

I have some cookbooks from my travels – and gee – why does everyone else cook with a metric system except for the US?! I’ve realized that I procrastinate from cooking wonderful (and easy) dishes from Spain and Cuba because I can’t be bothered with searching another book for the conversions!

I’ve eaten bad meat. That I made bad, apparently. I eagerly accepted the nieces’ leftover Wahoo Fish Taco beef teriyaki bowl. Purchased on New Year’s Eve (12/31). I left it in my refrigerator in its original take-out styrofoam container. Using the FIFO (first-in, first-out) inventory method of consumption, I just got to snacking on it for dinner Saturday (1/05). Hm, six days, no problem!! There was no odd smell, so that smell didn’t turn up anything fishy (har har).

*Urgh* But something is slightly amiss. I ignored that “not so fresh” feeling and ate some more for an after-dinner snack. *Blurgh*.

My buddy Dave gave me his stash of fresh fruit and vegetables before heading home for the holidays. I had been avoiding cutting the mango for a few days, but in trying to eat healthier, decided to cut it up. But how does one cut a mango, I wondered. Those of you from East Asian or South Asian families may have your methods…

I found some nicely photographed instructions at Simply Recipes (though they coincidentally did not include any photos of the messy cleaning off of the seed).