I was planning on writing an entirely different blogum tonight, but then I ended up having to throw out what were thirty perfectly delicious-looking tomatoes and plans changed. Wasting food always makes me angry. I am fortunate to have food to eat and too many aren’t so lucky. And I love tomatoes. Fruit or vegetable, whatever they are, I love them.
For years I have wanted a food mill, but I had committed to not buying anymore small kitchen appliances or tools unless convinced I would use them enough to justify the money spent and the real estate occupied in my small kitchen. Truthfully, the idea of having only two pots and two knives seems really sexy to me right now, but I doubt this pack rat will ever have the courage to go there. So why did I finally cave? Basically, because I love meals made with tomatoes and I no longer eat canned ones due to the presence of the chemical Bisphenol–A, commonly referred to as BPA, in the can lining. Studies of Bisphenol-A have found many health effects, including a relationship between the amount of BPA that individuals had in their body (measured in their urine) and the occurrence of cardiovascular disease, diabetes (adult onset diabetes) and abnormalities of liver enzymes (suggestive of liver damage). Bisphenol-A also has been found to affect the normal activity of estrogen and to cause chromosomal abnormalities in eggs.
Due to Bisphenol-A’s widespread use, it is likely not possible to eliminate my exposure, but given that canned foods are the predominant source of daily exposure I can reduce my exposure to this chemical by switching from canned food to fresh and frozen food products. And so I did, stop eating canned food as much as possible that is, which in my case means there are no longer tons and tons of tomato cans in my recycling box.
Since then I have been eating less tomatoes (not happily) and skinning and seeding fresh ones when I do eat them. I do not enjoy skinning and seeding tomatoes and I miss the convenience of canned tomatoes. I have very recently also bought tomato sauce (not pasta sauce) in glass jars a few times, but it still isn’t the same as canned tomatoes. If I could find a company that sold diced tomatoes in glass jars, I would be their first customer. I keep hoping Eden Foods will consider selling tomatoes in the same cans they sell their beans in or alternatively in glass jars. Eden Foods sells their beans packed in steel cans coated with a baked on oleoresinous (a natural mixture of an oil and a resin extracted from various plants, such as pine or balsam fir) c-enamel lining, that does not contain bisphenol-A. My understanding is that they do not sell their tomatoes in the same cans because they would not last as long due to the acidity of tomatoes, but I would still happily buy them with a shorter expiry date.
You would be forgiven for thinking this blogum was about the evils of Bisphenol-A; it is not.
In my desire to eat more tomato meals again, I treated myself to a stainless steel food mill yesterday, with plans to use it to skin and seed fresh tomatoes. And that is just what I did tonight, with thirty tomatoes. While at first I could not get it to work, I was turning it counter-clockwise instead of clockwise, in the end I was pleased with what I produced, that was until I noticed the pool of what looked like squid ink in the middle of my milled tomatoes. For those of you unfamiliar with squid ink, it is black, pitch black and I am pretty sure it is produced by squid not stainless steel food mills. The next part of my story is embarrassing. After I recovered from the shock I then lifted some of the black substance onto a spoon. I was utterly confused. I knew that the food mill was meticulously clean before I used it, so I could not fathom that it had come off the mill, though I considered whether it was perhaps grease added to allow the mill to move smoothly? After that I thought maybe some sort of speedy oxidization had occurred from all the friction. Then came the embarrassing part. I told myself to calm down and mixed the pot of now milled tomatoes (not that I could have rescued the tomatoes from the black substance at that point anyway). But I could not relax. “No, something is wrong; trust your instincts. You have cooked with a million tomatoes by now and none of them turned black.” Then confirmation came when I found more black stuff on two locations on the stainless steel post holding the blade (first just above the grill/disc when the mill is assembled and the second just below the grill/disc, once again while assembled).
If you look at the picture above, the two arrows indicate where the further mysterious black stuff was found and if you look between the arrows you will see what looks like almost a groove. That is where the grill disc is located when the mill is assembled. However it is not a groove, at least not an intentional one. It is in fact the steel having been worn down into my tomato sauce after one use of the food mill on 30 partially cooked soft tomatoes.
So I ground stainless steel into my milled tomatoes!!! I will return it and I doubt I will ever purchase another one. This occurrence has turned me off them entirely.
Unfortunately, I decided to write this blogum after I had already tossed out the sauce, so I have few pictures of the black stuff and the colours of the first photograph do not make it looked appropriately black. The contrast to the white paper towel in the second photo is more representative of the colour.
This is the food mill that I bought:
Is stainless steel being ground into food a risk when using food mills or was my situation a historic aberration?
Is stainless steel dangerous to consume? I do not know, but I would guess so. All I know about stainless steel is that it has chromium in it, which blocks corrosion. All I know about chromium is that it was the chemical mentioned in the Erin Brockovich movie and everyone seemed to be dying of something in that movie. So, it was likely the right decision that I threw out the sauce, even though I was really looking forward to the Tagliatelle alla Bolognese and so were my nephews, as it is their favourite dish of mine. Oh yeah! Did I mention that part? I almost served stainless steel to children!!
Sage Spencer
Next Blogum: September 2009
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