My Dominick's Horror Story

I went to the Dominick's Store on Canal and Roosevelt on Feb. 17th 2011 to pick up a few items for dinner. I was looking for the Blade Cut Lamb chops that they had just put on sale that day. We went over to the meat counter and noticed that there weren't any out. We asked the lady in the meat department if they had any. She said, they were just now packaging them and putting them out. Mind you, this was after 3p.m. The store opens at 7 a.m. I picked what I thought were the best packages of lamb and remarked to my husband how nice and pink they looked. We made our purchase and drove home. As I opened the first package of lamb, I was hit with the most horrible smell. I couldn't believe that it was coming from this "fresh" pack of meat I had just purchased and that they had JUST packaged. I opened the other 4 packs and they were all the same. SPOILED!!! I couldn't understand how they could have even packaged the meat. It smelled that bad. I was immediately drawn back to the color of the meat. Beautiful pink and fresh looking meat. I remembered a story about stores treating their meat with carbon monoxide to "hold" the color. I also remember Safeway, the store that owns Dominick's saying in 2006 that they would NOT be selling meat like this. I guess they changed their mind. We called the store and told them what happened. I recognized the voice on the other end as the same woman who brought the meat out. She was the manager of the department and only gave me a quick reply of, "You can bring it back. No apologies, just bring it back. My next call was to the corporate office of Dominick's. They were a bit more apologetic. I filed my formal complaint and my husband took the meat all the way back to the store. When he saw the lady, her attitude had changed. I guess corporate had got to her before he did. She apologized again and again and all the lamb had been removed from the shelf. She did offer up this one tidbit. She said that the guy who packaged the meat said it smelled like that because it was, "WILD" lamb! Are you kidding me? If this guy doesn't know the difference between wild and rancid, he should not be working around meat. The woman had the nerve to offer my husband a steak. He told her he didn't want any meat from Dominick's anymore. "It ain't all bad", she replied as he walked away. Well, that is my Dominick's horror story. From the looks of the newspaper and daily news stories about Dominick's today, I see my story is not an isolated incident. Unfortunately, it also shines light on what our government is allowing for our stores to sell us. Why treat the meat with chemicals at all? It only leads to more cases of bad meat being sold. The opportunity for consumers to become ill from eating stale dated meat is huge! Be careful out there. The "sell by" date means nothing. I have provided a link about carbon monoxide treated meat.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/21/earlyshow/health/main1332952.shtml

Peace and healthy eating,
Jocelyn

My New Hobbies

I was one of those people who would get on the computer and do a little surfing, check out a possible new website for my children or play a few games online. Nothing big and never too much time spent. That was until I discovered, "Freebies and Sweepstakes". My world has been turned upside down! One day while I was checking out my facebook page, I came across a post from a friend who had just scored a good coupon for something. I can't even remembered what it was. I clicked on her page and followed the link and got the coupon also. Little did I know what chain of events that little harmless click would unleash. I found a whole new world of people just like myself looking for bargains online. Not only that though, there were companies giving away stuff for FREE! I was amazed. There was cereal and juice, coffee and numerous t-shirts. It was the start of something wonderful. I "liked" a couple of these pages and was turned on to even more pages! On one of these pages, I discovered, Instant Win Games. Oh boy! I was hooked. I found myself waking up early or staying up late just so I could play these games to try and win something. While I haven't won anything big yet, I have won enough stuff to catch the attention of my husband and children and keep me playing.(19 prizes won so far)! He now asks, "if there is anything good out there", worth trying to win. I haven't even talked about the sweepstakes yet. There are literally hundreds of them on the net. I had seen them from time to time,but never thought that they were anything but scams or un-winnable bits of advertising. My mind has been changed. I have read the posts of regular people just like me, who have won some incredible prizes. Again, I haven't won anything big yet myself, but at least now I believe I can. My oldest son thinks I have gone mad when I now ask him not to throw his bottle caps from Coca-Cola or Sprite away so I can get codes from underneath or when I buy 6 boxes of popcorn to get the free codes for Redbox on the inside. Although he has enjoyed the 8 boxes of Pillsbury Toaster Strudels I won. I have to credit www.freebies4mom.com, http://sweetiesfreebies.com and http://www.happyclippings.com for helping me on my journey through this wild and wonderful world of sweepstakes, freebies and fun. Continued success to them and thanks for all you do. In the meantime, I still hope to snag a big win, (an ipad is high on the list).  But, even if I don't win something big, I am loving the little things. If you haven't tried it, you should. You never know what you might find or win. Happy Sweeping and Freebie Finding!