I have my furnace inspected annually. I pay attention when a flight attendant gives safety information. I don’t skydive, racecars, or shower when it’s lightning out. No one who knows me would ever accuse me of being a risk taker. And yet, it turns out, I’ve been living dangerously all along. Me. The one with the sensible shoes and the hand sanitizer.
It’s hard for me to admit this, but I’ve been sopping up runny egg yokes with toast my whole life. Well, the yolk’s on me. (Sorry.) Several brands of eggs have been implicated in Salmonella poisoning — or Sam and Ella, as it’s affectionately known in some circles. And no matter what brand of eggs we buy, we’re advised to cook them fully. Let me just say, EEW. Ick to Sam and Ella and ick to cooking eggs fully.
I love eggs, but I like them soft cooked–and Salmonella free. Is that too much to ask? The truth is I like a lot of foods rare, half baked, not quite done–maybe because that’s how I am. I prefer my egg yolks runny and my steaks medium rare. I practically growl when I eat red meat. I snack on raw potato slices when I make dinner and I like cookie dough better than I like cookies. (Luckily, I don’t make cookies very often.) In my opinion, the only good reason to cook an egg until it’s well done is to put it in an Easter basket. Oh, and to avoid death by omelet.
It’s not that I’ve never heard the advice about cooking eggs (and cookie dough) fully before. It’s just that old habits are hard to crack – I mean break. I grew up with chickens in the backyard and soft poached eggs for breakfast, and I lived to crow about it. (Sorry again.) The difference was that my family’s chickens lived idyllic free-range chicken lives – except when they became Sunday dinner, which, I realize, was more idyllic for me than it was for them.
I’ll get through this. I’m capable of change when it’s a matter of life and death. I once ate my hamburgers rare too, until that became lethal. But the bigger issue is this matter of frequent food recalls. Recalls are like bad weather; you dig out from one storm and then another one comes along. There have been so many recalls recently that I can hardly keep track: Ground beef, deli meat, milk, cereal, tuna, Toyotas. Oh wait. That’s a different issue.
Not long ago, a recall on lettuce was making headlines. I was so relieved when that was over, because I could not bring myself to cook my lettuce fully. Then there was a spinach recall. Can you imagine coming to the end of your life early only to find out it was spinach that did you in? Spinach. The iron-rich, vitamin-loaded, leafy greens for tough guys like Popeye, who could take on any challenger despite those funny arms. (A symptom of bad spinach?)
The spinach scare was especially difficult for me because, at the time, it was one of only a handful of vegetables my son would eat. Suddenly, he feared spinach. Just what we need: Children running scared from produce. I suppose we can always buy those fake fruit snacks for our kids; cavities do beat kidney failure.
These are tough times for people who eat. And I know I can’t give up the habit. Heck, I can’t even cut down. What to do? Buy local. Plant gardens and raise our own meat and eggs. Insist on tougher food safety laws and soft-boiled food inspectors. I mean hard-boiled.
(Send your locally produced vegetables and eggs to drosby@rushmore.com or see www.dorothyrosby.com.)
