Food Borne Illness

This post may be TMI.... so you may want to move along now.












No... really, feel free to just wander over to the next blog. I recommend The Blog that Ate Manhattan, her pictures from Roanoke are great!





Really? I think the Shrink Rappers are podcasting this weekend.






TinySurgeon"s got a great post about being a gunner.







Don"t you want to read the New York Times? You can do it online now, you know.











OK.... you asked for it! About a week ago, I cooked a chicken. Actually, after getting it home and butterflying it, I decided it was the biggest chicken I"d ever seen. Anyway, covered it in lemon, pepper, thyme, olive oil and then broiled it.

Well, after cooking it (and I thought I had cooked it to an internal temp of 165), I let it rest for a few minutes and then ate it. Come to find out later, my probe thermometer is not working correctly. About 2-3 days ago, I was eating a drumstick from said chicken and chomped into an area of raw chicken.

Now, because of the large scale poultry farming, chickens can carry salmonella and campylobacter. I"m really quite careful about chicken. It has it"s own cutting board. I refrigerate it quickly. I really am all about food safety.

Now, I think I have Salmonella. I won"t go into why. That really would be TMI. Why can"t I just get lucky, once in a while? If 20% of US chickens are infected with Salmonella, that means that 80% are not. Oh, statistics, why did you fail me?

All you younguns out there, make sure that you cook your chicken properly!

Salmonella is, apparently, a self-limited problem. And, apparently, outside of the immunocompromised or hospitalized, antibiotics aren"t supposed to have much of a benefit. I"m still considering them. I"m a naughty doctor.