Am I going to be sorry?

[viva]

last weekend I ate some moldy bread.  It had white spots all over, and hadn't reached the "blue" stage yet.  I just shrugged my shoulders, toasted it, and put some honey on it

good to see takadi is a college student with horrible eating habits like me (:

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Exactly. I just scrape mold off of bread/cheese as long as it's confined to a relatively small area. Toast that puppy and you're good to go.

[SheenaGreena]

last weekend I ate some moldy bread.  It had white spots all over, and hadn't reached the "blue" stage yet.  I just shrugged my shoulders, toasted it, and put some honey on it

good to see takadi is a college student with horrible eating habits like me (:

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Exactly. I just scrape mold off of bread/cheese as long as it's confined to a relatively small area. Toast that puppy and you're good to go.

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I didn't scrape the bread!!!!!!! I don't know why I didn't cut off the spots (there were tons), maybe I was lazy?

[Kouign Aman]

I'm pretty careful with everything except pizza. I've been known to buy a pizza at work Monday night and store it at my desk, finishing it for lunch on Friday. So far, no ill effects. Of course, the building is chilled to meat locker temperature (its June & I'm wearing polar fleece indoors here).

Stock - I've grown bacteria in that stuff on purpose. Stock and soups get into the fridge, ditto braises. Tho if the lid is on tight, they can sit at room temp awhile, because they are essentially sterile when made (all that time at 212F), so if the lid fits tightly, the inoculum concentration is low. Still, I have a family that includes a smallfry and an immune compromised member so I'm being more careful than I would for just myself.

fuzzy cheese - cut off the fuzz eat the cheese

fuzzy bread - trash. FWIW - there's a mold that grows on Ryebread which can cause hallucinations & spasms.

Food poisoning = 2x:

airline hamburger (nasty nasty nasty) and milder from shellfish in Ensenada (i'd a thought this was seasickness but it got all of us who had the mussel soup and spared those who didnt).

[demiglace]

from E Medicine Health

Food poisoning is a common, usually mild, but sometimes deadly illness. Typical symptoms include nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramping, and diarrhea that come on suddenly (within 48 hours) of consuming a contaminated food or drink. Depending on the contaminant, fever and chills, bloody stools, dehydration, and nervous system damage may follow. These symptoms may affect one person or a group of people who ate the same thing (this would be called an outbreak).

Does sometimes deadly worry anyone?

[Timh]

"I had a decent case of food poisoning last weekend.

I was at a party where the hosts are meticulous about keeping track about how long the food has been sitting out and tossing anything that has been out too long or is doubtful in any way. People I know ate EVERYTHING that I did, and yet I was the only one who was sick. Apparently, I won the lottery and got the one bad whatever it was."

If no one else got sick from eating the same food, then it wasn't the food, it was something with you.

As a chef I deal with this during flu season all of the time. Someone comes in and eats then later they call describing their illness, I ask what they ate, if anyone else at the table shared food, or had issues, and then look at the sales report on the number of those items sold. 100% of the time it has been the person, but to make these wild claims can damage a restaurants reputation.

Edited June 26, 2007 by Timh (log)

[SheenaGreena]

there's a mold that grows on Ryebread which can cause hallucinations & spasms

Im buying rye bread tomorrow.....

[Kouign Aman]

Have fun.

[ermintrude]

I was at a party where the hosts are meticulous about keeping track about how long the food has been sitting out and tossing anything that has been out too long or is doubtful in any way. People I know ate EVERYTHING that I did, and yet I was the only one who was sick. Apparently, I won the lottery and got the one bad whatever it was

This, in general, would indicate it was not the food many cases of food poisoning especially those that come on quickly are not caused by food but by other means of transmission. E.g. you touched a door handle and picked up Norovirus at another location which is NOT food poisoning also it may have been from something else you ate days before:-

Average times to make you ill are :-

12 to 36 hours Salmonella

1-6 days E-Coli 0157

3-5 days Campylobacter

7 days Cryptosporidiosis

2 weeks Giardia

Most people think food poisoning is due to something they ate recently, this is not always true. Statistically I think your hosts were not to blame, it could have been that sandwich you had 3 days ago

[ermintrude]

I was at a party where the hosts are meticulous about keeping track about how long the food has been sitting out and tossing anything that has been out too long or is doubtful in any way. People I know ate EVERYTHING that I did, and yet I was the only one who was sick. Apparently, I won the lottery and got the one bad whatever it was

This, in general, would indicate it was not the food many cases of food poisoning especially those that come on quickly are not caused by food but by other means of transmission. E.g. you touched a door handle and picked up Norovirus at another location which is NOT food poisoning also it may have been from something else you ate days before:-

Average times to make you ill are :-

12 to 36 hours Salmonella

1-6 days E-Coli 0157

3-5 days Campylobacter

7 days Cryptosporidiosis

2 weeks Giardia

Most people think food poisoning is due to something they ate recently, this is not always true. Statistically I think your hosts were not to blame, it could have been that sandwich you had several days ago. Because most people do not understand gastro illnesses many restaurants get blamed when it was the door handle at work (and these virus type infections are virulent)/restaurants/snack bar days before that was the source

Edited June 26, 2007 by ermintrude (log)

[purplewiz]

If it wasn't from the party, then that's even more reason for me to take reasonable but not extreme food precautions - because then who really knows where it came from? (And I don't blame the hosts at all - I'm looking forward to eating dinner there again in the future!)

Marcia.

[heidih]

there's a mold that grows on Ryebread which can cause hallucinations & spasms

Im buying rye bread tomorrow.....

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I think that is a reference to the Salem Witch Trials- all that twitching & hallucinating has been theoretically tied to crazy spores in some rye or similar grain.

[Busboy]

there's a mold that grows on Ryebread which can cause hallucinations & spasms

Im buying rye bread tomorrow.....

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I think that is a reference to the Salem Witch Trials- all that twitching & hallucinating has been theoretically tied to crazy spores in some rye or similar grain.

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Symptoms are not as much fun as they sound at first, apparently. Salem witch trial connection is at best conjecture, but it makes a good story so I'm going with it.

To the original post, I am quite careful with stocks and egg sauces, but will eat almost anything else the morning after. Had a big chunk of raw mackerel the other day because the texture looked ewww-y. (Decent taste, but the texture problems only compounded when the stuff was chopped and set up with lime, so we chucked it anyway).

[Domestic Goddess]

Raw chicken or pork? Not a chance.

I do, however, love Beefsteak Tartar. Also when sectioning a larger cut of meat I've brought home from the market I cut off a few strips to enjoy raw with a bit of salt and pepper.

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My hubby told me that when he worked as a butcher there in the US, he had a fellow butcher who would pop pieces of raw beef into his mouth whenever he is chopping/slicing steak. He would cringe everytime he saw that.

I, however, adore a bloody steak and raw beef. I have never eaten raw beef until I ate beef sashimi in korean restaurants. One time, we were dining in a korean BBQ place when my hubby's boss happened to be there at the same restaurant. He promptly sent over a platter of the tenderest pieces of raw beef that was meant to be eaten raw. I devoured the whole set.

[SuzySushi]

Raw chicken or pork? Not a chance.

I do, however, love Beefsteak Tartar. Also when sectioning a larger cut of meat I've brought home from the market I cut off a few strips to enjoy raw with a bit of salt and pepper.

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My hubby told me that when he worked as a butcher there in the US, he had a fellow butcher who would pop pieces of raw beef into his mouth whenever he is chopping/slicing steak. He would cringe everytime he saw that.

I, however, adore a bloody steak and raw beef. I have never eaten raw beef until I ate beef sashimi in korean restaurants. One time, we were dining in a korean BBQ place when my hubby's boss happened to be there at the same restaurant. He promptly sent over a platter of the tenderest pieces of raw beef that was meant to be eaten raw. I devoured the whole set.

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When I was growing up, we (my mom, my sister, and I) would always sample bits of raw ground beef when my mom was seasoning it for hamburgers or meatloaf. My mom had told us about steak tartare. Of course, that was in the days before all the e.coli incidents, and she always bought a piece of steak at a Kosher butcher shop and had it ground freshly (Kosher butchers don't use the hindquarters of the cow, so there was probably less chance of contamination).

Edited June 27, 2007 by SuzySushi (log)

[gariotin]

I am admittedly a little lax in this dept - partly because I do not like to eat cold food. I like things lo be at room temp. I am not speaking of raw meat or fish, as much as cheese, pate, veggies, etc.

It is something I think about, even with refrigerated foods, as I have absolutely no sense of smell. This means I taste about 1 on a scale of 1 to 10. Did you know that the 3 biggest dangers for people with anosmia are fire, gas leaks, and...food poisoning!

A perfect example was last week - I had bought a pint of chicken salad from the local deli and brought it right home to refrigerate. My daughter came over about a day later and tried some - made a face and spit it out. She said it tasted sour and spoiled. I had just had a sandwich about an hour before and it tasted fine to me! I dumped it, and luckily didn't get sick, but it's a problem. Can y imagine pouring curdled milk right into your coffee b/c you can't smell that it's sour? Yep, I've done it a few times.

The last time I got what I think was food poisoning was from a restaurant dish involving wild mushrooms - think I got a doozy and barfed my brains out all nite. That was about 20 years ago.

[LittleLea]

FWIW - there's a mold that grows on Ryebread which can cause hallucinations & spasms.

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I am totally leaving my rye out to mold.

Party anyone?

EDIT: Nevermind! I read that link describing the effects... I'll pass!

Edited June 28, 2007 by LittleLea (log)

[Kouign Aman]

Yeah, its not pleasant. St Vitus' Dance is one name for the effect.

The 'spasms' part should be a tip-off.

[Arey]

 

It is something I think about, even with refrigerated foods, as I have absolutely no sense of smell.  This means I taste about 1 on a scale of 1 to 10.  Did you know that the 3 biggest dangers for people with anosmia are fire, gas leaks, and...food poisoning!

A perfect example was last week - I had bought a pint of chicken salad from the local deli and brought it right home to refrigerate.  My daughter came over about a day later and tried some - made a face and spit it out.  She said it tasted sour and spoiled.  I had just had a sandwich about an hour before and it tasted fine to me!  I dumped it, and luckily didn't get sick, but it's a problem.  Can y imagine pouring curdled milk right into your coffee b/c you can't smell that it's sour?  Yep, I've done it a few times.

The last time I got what I think was food poisoning was from a restaurant dish involving wild mushrooms - think I got a doozy and barfed my brains out all nite. That was about 20 years ago.

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As someone who has poured chunky milk on their cereal in the morning, I can sympathize. I always toss things after their "best by" date even if they look perfectly good. I've established a good relationship with my fish monger (today while telling me the fish he reccomended, I said "You didn't say scrod". He replied "That's because you don't want the scrod". I also have a good relationship with my butcher. I have an iffy relationship at the produce store because you don't need a sense of smell to see that some of that stuff is only fit for composting.

I've never eaten raw chicken, but have had chicken drumsticks and thighs that were medium rare at the bone because I got tired of waiting for them to get done. I don't think I could stomach raw chicken or pork. Beef is an entirely different matter. It's a well known fact that well done hamburgers and steaks are a leading cause of Von Herzenbergerdorfer-Ungleiblichliebe Weltschmertz Syndrome.

[emmalish]

When I was a kid, my mom would always leave food out – and she still does – a pot of stew sitting on the stovetop all day, or the Christmas turkey sitting out until we'd finished picking at it the next day. I never thought anything about it growing up. But I grew up, moved out, and learned about proper food handling. Eventually, I looked back and remembered that I used to get "the flu" a lot as a child.

Now I'm pretty anal about putting things in the fridge right away, and not using dairy products past the best before date (I know, it's just a guide, but – paranoid).

As an adult, I've only had food poisoning a couple of times, and they were both doozies. One time I ended up passed out in the bathroom between the toilet and the tub. The other time, it developed into a secondary infection and I almost ended up in the hospital. For a little over a month, I was on a diet of plain white rice and red-skinned apples. That was pretty much all I could keep in my stomach. Everything else passed right through within 15 minutes (still recognizable - ewwww).

Edited June 29, 2007 by emmalish (log)

[heidih]

Beef is an entirely different matter. It's a well known fact that well done hamburgers and steaks are a leading cause of Von Herzenbergerdorfer-Ungleiblichliebe Weltschmertz Syndrome.

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[Lady T]

One of the most wonderful food experiences of my entire life happened long ago, at the old Wrigley Building Restaurant in downtown Chicago by the River of that name, where the head waiter wheeled a cart out to the table where I sat and proceeded to make a classic steak tartare exactly to my specifications...he asked me whether I wanted capers, and so on, and then left me with an unlimited supply of warm freshly-made toast and a gorgeous mound of microscopically-fine (chopped to a paste, and by hand!), highly-seasoned chopped sirloin (compounded in a frosty chilled bowl, no less) with minced shallot and raw egg and herbs and Worcestershire sauce and and and.

Combined with a green salad au vinaigrette, it was complete and absolute savory heaven. But I can't imagine daring to ever enter that order in any restaurant anywhere again in this life without fearing for that life; at best, I might be able to approximate it at home with my own carefully bought, obsessively prepared, and stringently stored ingredients.

*Sigh.* But damn, that was an evening and a half...

[Malkavian]

I scrape food bits off plates and reuse them, leave food on the counter to marinate (in terms of a few dozen minutes mind you, i'm not totally insane) , all sorts of things that would give my mom a heart attack (And she almost had one when I finished that oyster po'boy that had ridden home for an hour unrefrigerated, but hey i'm still here)

I tend to think that it isn't so much that I'm doing things recklessly, more that my mom (who was raised this way by her mom, i'm sure) is extremely anal about things like leaving food out, the life-span of leftovers and so forth and so we always clash about things like that (I mention her in particular because most of my cooking knowhow came from her)

Then again, maybe I have an iron stomach and I've just dodged a lot of food poisoning bullets in my 24 years.

[Hest88]

Well although my mom is one of those "you can eat off her floors" women, as a Chinese immigrant she nonetheless had ideas about food hygiene that differed greatly from her American neighbors. As a result, I'm totally lax when it comes to refrigeration and the like. Granted, I'm convinced one of the reasons we never got sick was because just about all veggies were cooked, I also believe the lack of conventional hygiene gave all of us stronger stomachs.

[mzrb]

Unfort., I don't know where i read this originally--but my memory is it was a really reliable source--but scientists said it was okay to leave pizza out for a couple of days, as the high acid level of the tomato sauce kept bacteria at bay. So, neurotic as I am about getting things into the fridge (I am from the "when in doubt, throw it out" school of thinking), I am happy to leave pizza out.

[scubadoo97]

FWIW - there's a mold that grows on Ryebread which can cause hallucinations & spasms.

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The mold you speak of is ergot. Ergot contains small quantities of lysergic acid. Lysergic acid, a molecule used in the synthesis of LSD, can be isolated from ergot.