Eideard

OK, boys. Turn ‘em loose!

Trillions of bacteria with a taste for turkey fat and cooking oil are being unleashed in sewers to eat the annual onslaught of Christmas dinner grease that risks blocking pipes.

Yorkshire Water said it was deploying the “biological weapon” of bacillus bacteria – commonly found in the human gut – in its sewer network in an attempt to prevent blockages, which typically increase by 25pc over the festive season.

The company began pouring vats of water mixed with the bacteria down sewers at known trouble spots last week and is rolling out the treatment at 180 sites in Yorkshire.

Sewer blockages cost the water industry tens of millions of pounds a year, with many due to hot fat, oil and grease being poured down the drains and then solidifying. The fat also binds with non-biodegradable rubbish flushed down toilets, causing blockages which can make sewage flood back up into homes.

The fatty build-ups are usually cleared out manually with high-pressure water jets. With the likely increase in fat over Christmas, the company was turning to “new and innovative methods”.

Patrick Killgallon, pollution manager at Yorkshire Water said the utility was confident that the ” ‘good’ bacteria, literally feasting on solidified fat” would be cost-effective and could potentially end all such blockages.

“Because these bacteria constantly multiply in the right environment, we can leave them to get on with their job in our sewers, seven days a week, 24 hours a day, without the need for regular dosing,” he said.

Next up? Little nano-boats filled with bacteria volunteers to navigate your own body’s plumbing.

A 21-year-old Australian will likely be more cautious after accepting a dare to swallow garden slugs infested with rat lungworms and spending a month in intensive care.

The parasites, found in uncooked snails and contaminated water and even vegetables, invade the central nervous system and cause a form of meningitis, a serious condition that can lead to death or permanent brain damage…

The unidentified Sydney man is expected to recover, and will surely start cooking his food…

The lifecycle of the rat lungworm is so gross it bears repeating. Adult worms live in the lungs of rats, who cough up and swallow the parasites’ eggs. Rat feces, which harbors lungworm eggs, is then eaten by snails or slugs. Once the larvae is in a human, the adult worms take up residence in the brain and begins burrowing around looking for a way to the lungs. They are trapped and die in the brain, but more larvae are on the way. Eventually, the brain swells to the point of death.

So – remember to boil your slugs. A lot!

A 77-year-old Ukrainian man won a jar full of sour cream for coming first in a dumpling eating contest and then promptly died, local media reported on Wednesday.

Ivan Mendel ate 10 dumplings in half a minute to win first place and a one-liter jar of sour cream in the contest held in the town of Tokmak in the southeastern Zaporizhya region on September 18, Fakty I Kommentarii newspaper said.

Shortly afterwards, Mendel became unwell and died, according to local news websites.

Dumplings, called “vareniki” in the former Soviet republic, are a staple of Ukrainian cuisine and are often stuffed with a range of fillings from mushrooms to cherries.

WTF?

They didn’t say what the stuffing was for the contest? I prefer potato.

A 2000-year-old tool that has gone on display in a Cambridge museum has been taken as proof that the Romans invented the Swiss army knife.

The Roman version of the famous multi-purpose tool includes a spoon, knife, three pronged fork, spike and even what looks like a toothpick.

At only 15cm long it would have fitted easily into the pocket of a discerning diner and is easy to clean and sharpen thanks to the silver and iron used to make it.

The Roman eating implement has been estimated to date from between 201 to 300 AD and originates from the Mediterranean region of Europe.

The tool is currently on display for the first time at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

Lucy Theobald, a spokesperson for the museum, said: “It’s believed to be an example of a Roman ‘Swiss army knife’ – a silver implement with a knife, spoon, fork, a spike for extracting meat from snails, and a spatula, which is believed to have been used for poking sauce out of narrow-necked bottles.”

No plastic, either. Every bit is repairable or easily replaceable. If you don’t remember when repairing things used to be part of design.

You must have some quick and easy [or complex] tomato recipes.

Sharing is OK.

I suppose you might call me a wild-fish snob. I don’t want to go into a fish market on Cape Cod and find farm-raised salmon from Chile and mussels from Prince Edward Island instead of cod, monkfish or haddock. I don’t want to go to a restaurant in Miami and see farm-raised catfish from Vietnam on the menu but no grouper.

Those have been my recent experiences, and according to many scientists, it may be the way of the future: most of the fish we’ll be eating will be farmed, and by midcentury, it might be easier to catch our favorite wild fish ourselves rather than buy it in the market.

Bittman’s preconceptions needn’t rule the groaning board. First, a significant number of calories are now safer to consume than in the wild and tastier than farming governed by beancounters rather than foodies.

Mussels being a great example – since these are the last to depart polluted waters and the first to return to tidal climes barely this side of industrial paper plants.

It’s all changed in just a few decades. I’m old enough to remember fishermen unloading boxes of flounder at the funky Fulton Fish Market in New York, charging wholesalers a nickel a pound. I remember when local mussels and oysters were practically free, when fresh tuna was an oxymoron, and when monkfish, squid and now-trendy skate were considered “trash.”

But we overfished these species to the point that it now takes more work, more energy, more equipment, more money to catch the same amount of fish — roughly 85 million tons a year, a yield that has remained mostly stagnant for the last decade after rapid growth and despite increasing demand.

Still, plenty of scientists say a turnaround is possible. Studies have found that even declining species can quickly recover if fisheries are managed well. It would help if the world’s wealthiest fish-eaters (they include us, folks) would broaden their appetites. Mackerel, anyone?

I grew up on the New England coast, years before Mr. Bittman might have snacked his way down the Cape. Subsistence fishing was part of our family life. If you couldn’t afford groceries, you always could cast a line and bring up a flatfish in season.

Day after day, week after week, for months in a row – the same fracking species. Whatever was in season. And the Italian half of the family showed the Scottish half a dozen ways to prepare skate, squid and mackerel, thank you.

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