I used to have a pothos plant growing on my kitchen windowsill. It never did too well, so I was surprised one day to see it had grown a long, thin new leaf. Then I figured out that my roommate had sprinkled chive seeds in the pot. The pothos didn't make it, but the chives thrived.

Fresh chives are wonderful, always good for a dash of springtime green in egg dishes, soups, cornbread, and practically any kind of veggie dish. I'm a big fan of frittatas with chives, tomatoes, and Parmesan, and don't even get me started on crispy golden Chinese chive pancakes...

Chives are easy to grow, both indoors and out, as my roommate ably demonstrated. April is a good month for planting chive seeds outdoors - seedlings should appear within ten days. Check out Garden Action for a primer on planting and caring for chives.

After green onions were identified as the source of contamination for an E. coli outbreak at several East Coast Taco Bells, the company not only recalled all the scallions at its 5,800 locations nationwide, but sent out samples of the rest of their food products for testing to ensure that no other foods were at risk. The tests have come back negative, leaving the green onions as the sole source for the bacteria.

Taco Bell has switched produce suppliers, but with 61 cases identified, including 48 hospitalizations and 7 cases of kidney failure, the company is not out of the woods yet. Lawsuits are already being filed on behalf of some of those who were victims of the contamination, and because most chain restaurants have indemnity agreements with their suppliers, the company will be the one held accountable in these cases.

The company is working to sanitize and reopen stores that closed as a result of the outbreak.

If you recall from September, there was an E. coli outbreak involving bagged spinach that got it pulled from supermarket shelves, restaurant menus and just about everywhere else after a few people became ill. It turns out that there is a connection between that incident and the most recent Taco Bell E. coli scare, where more than 50 people have become ill. Taco Bell already decided to pull their green onions from menus and check the safety of their other ingredients, but as the investigation continuted, it was discovered that the produce in question was processed by the California-based Ready Pac Produce company - the same one that was blamed for that spinach outbreak.

Ready Pac is the green onion supplier to the New England areas were outbreaks were reported at Taco Bells. They stopped production at their New Jersey plant so that federal inspectors could conduct tests. It is reported that the company is also testing their produce in California.

It should be noted, however, that the final results are not in yet and it cannot be said with certainty that Ready Pac supplied or processed the contaminated onions. Green onions are notoriously difficult to clean due to their multi-layered structure and have been responsible for several cases of food-borne illness in the past decade.

Taco Bell has decided to recall all the green onions from all of its 5,800 locations in the US after an outbreak of at least 43 cases of E. coli infections in New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Pennsylvania last week. Testing revealed that they were a possible source of the bacteria, although other non-meat sources have not been ruled out yet. Samples of the cilantro, cheddar cheese, blended cheese, yellow onions, tomatoes and lettuce are being sent to FDA labs for testing and comparison to the green onion samples. The states were the infections occurred will be testing their own samples, and Taco Bell is likely to have scientists at work on their behalf, as well. The sources for the potentially contaminated foods are still being identified, but consumers (unless you just ate at a Taco Bell despite the potential health risk) should not worry too much about it because suppliers for large buyers such as Taco Bell rarely sell directly to supermarkets.