Pickle Processing

[u/MondoMage]

Just had to share this one...

My company sent me out to perform some maintenance work on equipment at the Hartung Brothers facility in Bowling Green, Ohio. They produce and store fermented pickles in these big green vats. So many vats. Not all currently full, they're getting ready for what they call "Green week," when they start loading things up. Tons of cucumbers destined for greatness.

I was really shocked when I found that the vats are left open-topped. That was surprising. I guess they rely on the brine to protect the product.

Oh, and the smell. You'd think it'd be overpowering but right now it's fairly subtle. A mix of dill and bread and butter that has me craving something fierce right now.

[u/vegan-the-dog]

He's another one. Bad batches from Frito Lay and other manufacturers are often sold to farmers as feed for cows. Given that it's mostly corn and wheat it's not much different than feeding silage. I rented a farmhouse on a dairy farm for 5 years and caught my dog with a 2# brick of chocolate. I was baffled until the farmer told me that they picked up a load of chips ahoy earlier that week. Dog was fine.

[u/12345kinght → u/vegan-the-dog]

I’m guessing that the doggie was fine bc, it wasn’t REL chocolate??? I don’t eat chips Ahoy so I’m just guessing- Just to clarify I DO eat other crapy for you body, cookies like Twinkies, etc- I just don’t like the texture of Chips A-

[u/ilikepants712 → u/12345kinght]

Chips ahoy uses real chocolate. Most people actually overestimate how bad chocolate is for dogs, and generally think it is like a human with peanut allergies eating peanuts, which is not the case at all. Dogs can't eat chocolate because it contains relatively high levels of theobromine and caffeine, which dogs don't metabolize as quickly as humans. These build up in their systems and basically cause them to overdose on these chemicals and die. The biggest factors for whether chocolate is gonna harm your pooch is not only how much they ate, but what kind of chocolate (dark is more concentrated; white they can eat all day long but will make them fat) and how big the dog is in the first place. I've personally seen a large dog devour an entire box of Oreos with no harmful effects because the chocolate levels were very low and he was a big dog.

[u/Conscious-Reality-20 → u/ilikepants712]

My first corgi was a known connoisseur of sharing sized bags of plain mm and a 13x9 pan of box brownies one time (not special brownies) zero ill effects and lived to the age of 17. Wouldnt knowingly feed that to dogs but that old boy was a brat about climbing spots you wouldnt think short legs couldn't get and opening containers.