Raw Eggs

Life lesson learned: too much batter can be a bad thing.

One time I made a lot of chocolate chip cookies. Well, there would have been a whole lot of them had they actually all made it to the oven, but they didn't. I literally ate about half the batter (that's a lot). It's not like I pulled out a fork and just dug in, mind you. Things like this slip up on you unexpectedly. Just a little pinch there, licking the beaters, scraping out the very last of the bowl, that cookie that you thought would fit on the sheet but in the end it doesn't, etc.

Well, right quick my body let me know that it did not appreciate the sudden assault on it. Working in the public health field that I do, I have taken a lot of microbiology classes and read a lot of case studies on food poisoning, so of course my find immediately goes to raw eggs, salmonella, food poisoning, and death. I became concerned.

So, I did the first thing any rational person would do: I called my sister, a nurse. I asked her how long it usually takes for symptoms of food poisoning to occur. She listened intently like the compassionate health care professional she is, assured me that it usually takes several hours minimum for symptoms to appear. "You know, I really think that what you're feeling is just a result of having eaten half a batch of cookie dough. In all honesty, that's pretty gross."

Words to live by.