I can’t recall a time when there’s been so many product recalls and it’s starting to wear me down.
I’m just not sure what I should buy these days. I’m not a great cook so buying prepared meals is my go to. Especially Italian food, since I grew up in a family of great cooks who made everything from scratch. My grandmother, bless her soul, wouldn’t be happy with my purchases at the grocery store these days but, hey, it’s a lot quicker to warm a meal in the oven. As you can see I’m no Gordon Ramsey or Wolfgang Puck.
So, I’m sure you can sympathize with my current dilemma of what to buy as a variety of pasta meals have been taken off the shelves due to an outbreak of listeria. And it’s not just linguine; it’s fettuccine and bowtie pasta too! Listeria isn’t good to ingest. The bacterium can cause serious illnesses such as nausea, vomiting, fever, muscle aches and even worse, as a handful of people have died recently from eating tainted dinners.
To make matters more complicated, some popular brands of tomato sauces, produced by First and Last Bakery in Hartford, were recently recalled because of the potential for food poisoning. Of course consumers can return recalled products for a full refund but in my house I usually eat what I buy within a few days.
These recalls have me on edge, so I’ve decided on a plain culinary route. For the time being, I’m sticking to peanut butter and jelly with potato chips on the side for lunch and grilled cheese and canned soup for dinner.
My new meal plan might sound bland but there’s always dessert to look forward to. I love a good ice cream bar at night, but to my chagrin Haagen-Dazs recently recalled its Dark Chocolate Mini Bars. Apparently a batch of these bars, which by the way are really good, were found to contain an undeclared wheat product. That’s a big no-no if you happen to be allergic to wheat.
Oh well, eating too much ice cream can put on extra pounds anyway. So this might be a good time to increase my exercise routine. I enjoy a long bike ride on the Harlem Valley Rail Trail, but the temperatures are dropping and winter is not far behind. No problem, I’ll just head downstairs, turn on SportsCenter and ride my Peloton. Not as enjoyable as riding outdoors but at least I can catch up on the latest NBA scores while peddling to nowhere.
But even that has now become more complicated. Not because Spectrum recently delivered new receivers to install for my televisions—which caused hours of angst to figure out—but because Peloton recently recalled 833,000 Bike Plus units sold between January 2020 and April 2025. If you have such a bike you should stop using it immediately, warns Peloton, because of the potential for the seat post assembly to detach and break while in use.
That could really hurt in a variety of ways. So instead of riding, I’m rifling through files trying to find out when I bought my bike and whether the serial number on the bike makes it a candidate for a recall. Despite this latest setback, I’m trying to keep a positive outlook as I look for that infamous serial number.
If my bike is included in the recall, Peloton will ship me a new seat post assembly to install. The upside is that the seat post is free, the downside is that the company has no idea what I just went through trying to install several television receivers.
I’m trying not to stress over all these changes that have affected my daily routines. Maybe it’s best that I relax from time to time with an adult beverage to bring down my level of anxiety. I do like a glass of bubbly on occasion, but just when I thought I found a temporary solution to my personal doldrums, 941,000 bottles of wine have been recalled at Costco. Why? Apparently the bottles of certain varietals have the potential to break or shatter.
I just can’t seem to catch a break no matter where I turn. I’ll be okay though. I’ve already settled into my new lifestyle, catching the highlights on SportsCenter with a peanut butter sandwich and a bag of potato chips by my side.
Dave Dunleavy was a longtime reporter and columnist for The News-Times in Danbury. He lives in Kent.
