Have you ever accidentally almost killed people with your cooking?

I have. It happened a couple of weeks ago. The incident is now known as “botulism stew”. Please do not confuse this with “fart stew” or “fart stew part deux”. Those incidents require no further explanation.

Botulism stew happened one Saturday when I thought I was being so organized. I got up early to do laundry, and found a recipe online for a hamburger vegetable soup that I had all the ingredients for.

What I really learned from this is: If the can of tomatoes has gibberish where you thought the expiration date should be, do further research!

I only did the research after eating one bowl of soup and my husband was on his third. We both noticed a “strange after taste”.  I learned from my research that my tomatoes were canned in August of 2005. And the shelf life is NOT five years.  It’s not even one year.  Luckily, the soup boiled. This means if there was any botulism protein present it was killed by the heat. That didn’t stop me from staying up till 3:30 AM, and periodically checking my head to be sure I wasn’t becoming paralyzed.

Note to self: Not checking expiration dates = crazy behavior and no sleep!  It also gives my husband more cooking disasters to tease me about.  I have a feeling this Lent is going to be longer than most.

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