I don't mind if the lazy food handlers let the microbes attack the lettuce or the spinach. Even an occasional attack on meat is acceptable. But this is just too much:
A salmonella outbreak has prompted a national recall of two brands of peanut butter. The Indiana Department of Health confirms more than a dozen cases in Indiana.
If there is a nearly perfect food, peanut butter is it. When I was a child, it was comfort food presented by my mother, lovingly clinging to jelly between two slices of bread. When my finances were stressed, it helped keep my food bill low. When I am hungry and too lazy or busy to cook, it is there for me. When I am really in a hurry, there is no need for bread or crackers -- a finger in the jar will do. But if I want to be exotic and add a zingy taste to a piece of celery, it can handle that as well.
Let the salmonella get the peanut butter, and the terrorists win; that's all I'm saying.
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And - despite never getting even a single number right on the Powerball lottery (we will blow a dollar on that whenever the jackpot gets north of $200 million) -
upon getting the two jars of WalMart peanut butter ("GreatValue") out of the cupboard and inspecting the lot-numbers -
BINGO!!! the numbers matched the affected batch!
First, we felt fortunate that we were all still well......and then we began thinking back on all the recent times we didn't feel so well.....
(and now one can segue into liability lawsuits/pinstriped-pants ambulance chasers/product liability/tort reform etc etc)
This was the first time that I ever have had food in my shelf recalled - one and a half jars. It's the half jar that is bothering me, but hopefully since I've made it a couple of days since my peanut-butter-on-a-spoon-fest, I dodged the bullet.
I had a jar and so did my mother. I work in an elementary school and thought I had picked up a virus and passed it to my family. Little did I know our peanut butter was the culprit! My poor daughter was home with the flu and I made her a peanut butter sandwich so wouldn't be taking medicine on an empty stomach. Three hours later I saw the recall notice. Stomach problems on top of the flu. Needless to say her doctor is very concerned.
This is the first time I've seen local media report a salmonella "poisoning" story as an inconvenience that most of the public can handle with over-the-counter medications like Pepto-Bismol and Immodium. Apparently one only needs to seek hospital care if the usual medicine cabinet remedies fail to work after 12 hours or so.
It would be educational to know why officials' perceived alert level for an outbreak of salmonella has been "lowered to yellow."
If we let them get the penut butter, next thing that goes will be the Mac and cheese and beans and weenies!!
Unnamed reliable intelligent sources have reported that this particular nasty strain of salmonella originated in that evil demmoislamocommiefasist stronghold known as Carterstan just outside of Plains, Georgia.
I propose an immediate surge of 20 of our finest fighting Homeland Security elite, properly equipped with HumVees, Blackhawks, and a couple of A-10 Warthogs for clean sweep and hold operations in the squalid streets of Plains.
Better to fight those salmonella terrorists there than in the busy aisles of my local Walmart.