Talk to me about Botulism, please (sorta rambling)

Factual Questions
1

Backstory:

My roommate is a walking food poisoning factory. He frequently cooks food and leaves it on the stove anywhere from overnight to 24-36 hours occasionally reheating and eating off it. Not my main point though. But, his eyes are bigger than his stomach and tends to over do things. He loves fresh garlic and bought one of those restaurant size jugs of peeled, fresh garlic cloves.

We stored it in the refrigerator and only got through about 1/4 of it before the garlic started both molding and sprouting. My roommate the food poisoning genius reasoned that refrigerating it caused the spoilage, so he took it out of the 'fridge and left it on the counter, which no surprise to me accelerated the molding and sprouting.

Anyway, I’d say about 90% of it is still good and I want to preserve it. While googling about preserving garlic and not finding much useful, except you should use citric acid, which is kinda duh, 'cause I can read the label on jars of preserved garlic and the ingredients are garlic, water and citric acid. But like, how much citric acid? Plus my local grocery store doesn’t sell citric acid and if you ask they’re “duhhh, I dunno, check at the pharmacy or a chemical suppy store.” Idiots.

One thing that stuck out while googling the subject was that botulism seems to be a significant concern in mishandling garlic. So I googled up botulism because Mom instilled great fear in us kids about not washing canned goods before opening and never using denting cans. I wanted to get the latest straight dope on botulism.

The Wikipedia entry on it said foodborne infection does not occur in healthy adults & children more than 1 year old.

Long story short, assuming I’m “healthy,” I’m immune to foodborne botulism? It’s just not a concern?

What’s “healthy?” Not immuno-suppressed, like from HIV? Are there other ways I could be “unhealthy” as far as botulism is concerned, that is, susceptible to it?

Oh, and since I can’t find citric acid, I’m probably just going to freeze the garlic. I heard it’s not that bad tasting really.

2

I’m no botulism expert but I would toss the garlic based on the principle that throwing out food is impractical and expensive but lying in the emergency room stuck full of IVs because you can’t stop retching from food poisoning is even more impractical and expensive.

3

i think the wikipedia article may have been a little confusing. botulism can be caused by exposure to the bacteria (and those bacteria producing toxins) or just being exposed the toxins produced by the bacteria. in healthy adults, ingesting the bacteria or getting them in wounds is not as big of a problem because the immune system will fight the bacteria. but, if you get a “bloated” can, toxins may have already built up in the food. the immune system really doesn’t have much to do with preventing symptoms once the toxins are in you. stay away from the moldy food - it’s probably not good for you even without the botulin toxins.
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/diseaseinfo/botulism_g.htm

4

If you do put garlic in olive oil be sure to keep it refrigerated. This will retard the growth of botulism bacteria. Also keep in mind that the botulism toxin is heat labile, thorough cooking will disable it. That’s why old books used to recommend that you heat any home-canned products before tasting them. The toxin is pretty powerful stuff and potentially fatal-not nice.

5

You may also want to point out to Botulism Emeril that garlic is pretty damn cheao, all things considered. I mean a fresh head of garlic costs me about 50 cents. At the grocery store. In New York Freaking City!!

Tell your wannabe chef to be a little more careful with his food. Food poisoning isn’t that hard to catch. And next time he offers to cook, offer to buy him dinner instead.

6

cheap, i meant cheap!

grrr stupid letters