So we’re all ready to have our delayed Thanksgiving dinner last Friday. The meat is all smoked, the sweet potatoes are done, the rolls are nice and brown. So much food, and it all looks yummy. Of course, I know the number one rule of eating at this woman’s house: don’t eat anything that doesn’t appear freshly cooked, and never eat on the second day, unless it’s something like bread or rolls. Unfortunately, my husband forgot this rule and heaped on a spoon of a turkey casserole his grandmother made.
Later, as they’re putting the food up, MIL states that she’s going to throw out the casserole, because she’s not sure it’s any good. Apparently, said casserole was left out all the day before and most of Friday, and she knew this before hand. Yep, this woman served food she wasn’t sure was actually safe.
Is this just a fluke? She was just so busy she forgot? Nope. She’ll leave the most dangerous foods out on the counter for hours on end, apparently oblivious to the dangers of food poisoning. Deviled eggs? They’re still good left out overnight, right? How dangerous is room temperature mayonnaise anyway? Cheesecake? Why refrigerate it. It’s just eggs and dairy products. Meat? It’s cooked, right? Didn’t that kill all the germs?
How my husband ever made it to adulthood without a colostomy(sp?) bag, I’ll never know.
Has your husband suffered any ill-effects from the casserole? I was happy to emerge from Thanksgiving weekend unscathed by any poisoning, save for a bit of tummy rot from so much rich food in so few days. I tend not to trust other people with food preparation unless I know them and have watched them prepare a meal.
geez. do your outlaws happen to come from Pennsylvania, by any chance? my husband’s mother is just like that. prepared dishes will sit on the counter all day long, just waiting to be re-heated for dinner. i often wondered whether these people ever heard of Safe Food Handling. perhaps the fact that his parents originally grew up on farms had something to do with it.
kaylasdad99, isn’t that what the little EDIT button is there for?
My MIL wil let stuff sit out on the counter all day to thaw - uncovered - and she’ll put leftovers into the fridge - also uncovered. I’m guessing they’ve all built up an immunity over the decades. I’ve gotten a rep as a picky eater. ah well…
My father-in-law made some deviled eggs that on second look appeared kind of nasty - either he’d left them out, or they were made with some kind of oil that had separated… ew. He’s also notorious for thinking that frozen/refridgerated meat lasts longer than it really does (which reminds me, I need to clean out the stuff in my freezer that he gave us).
No, thank God, but I told him that if he felt the slightest bit of stomach upset, he should go ahead and see the doctor, since he said that upon hearing that the casserole was bad, he did think it had tasted funny.
My father-in-law smoked a turkey a day or so before Thanksgiving, put it in a plastic bag, and brought it with him on the airplane, from California to Arizona. I figure with travel to and from the airport, check-in, etc. that turkey was at room temperature for at least 6 hours. Nobody got sick, but I draw the line at carry-on turkey.
I have some relatives and some friends like this. I don’t trust anything unless I’ve seen it prepared from scratch, and I even sneak an inspection of the dishes and utensils. (I don’t often eat in either home because I’d just rather skip the ordeal.) One of the relatives brags about some of the junk he’s eaten and not died from. (Like rainbow meat or food from cans that look ready to explode.) In one of the households, it used to be common for pots of leftover food to be left out for so long that the food turned mouldy and had bugs.
I’m pretty much the opposite. I’m paranoid about undercooked meat, or dented cans, or leaving out leftovers, etc.
Once I went to a friend’s for dinner and as she poured frozen vegetables from a bag, an equally frozen cockroach came out along with the veggies. And cockroaches ran across the stove the entire time dinner was cooking (minus the veggies–they were thrown out) . There was even a cockroached hiding in the roll of toilet paper in the bathroom. They aren’t dirty people or anything, but their house had a terrible cockroach problem at one point.
MelCtheFirst-- sorry if you were joking but I can’t tell. . . in case you were being straight, actually reheating it won’t help often as the germs put out toxins that aren’t alive (and won’t die in the reheating and will remain as the bugs are dead) but are still extremely poisonous (ie botulism, I believe).
Stuffing, also known as “Wadding” or “farcemeat” can often be therapeutic if prepared by individuals with much repressed hostility. The ramming of moist breadstuffs and spices deep into an avian body cavity, albeit one which was formerly full of vital and sub-vital organs, often provides a helpful relief to rageaholics. I recommend that in the interest of public health, all households should have a bird (need not be turkey) into which someone may cram an object when the necessity arises. Small children could use cornish game hens.
Caveat: Stuffed pork, while tasty, has not been documented via clinical trials to be as therapeutic as a bird cavity.
QtM
I had food poisoning eighteen years ago and it still makes me ill to think about it. I was still weak after two weeks. When I talked to the doctor, I found out something interesting. Food-poisoning can be passed on to someone else. Whatever germs that you have can be shared.
Yes, older people really can forget things like putting the food away. And they may not be thinking straight about how dangerous that can be.
Well, if fizzy’s mother is trying to kill me with food, she’s got another thing coming.
I went to boarding school. FOUR YEARS, BABY. Anything they dished out there I either sniffed out and destroyed before it could infect me or ate so fast it didn’t have a time to burrow into my mouth.
Four years of food there has hardened me against the worst college has to offer. Future MIL should be running away from my Stomach of Steel by now.
