I have the winners for The Everlasting Meal giveaway:
I’ll contact you shortly to get your address if I don’t hear from you first, not that I ever want to think about food ever again. On Saturday I bought what is, quite possibly, my dream rug. I was so excited that I convinced the Mister to come with me to IKEA to get rug pads. My mom agreed to watch the boys and give them dinner, so off we went. Thanks to traffic, we didn’t get home until almost 7:30, at which point we were starving. We debated going out to dinner, but I said (famous last words), “I would love to, but let’s be good and eat at home. We can put the money we save towards the trip to Rome.”
So we went to Target to return a rug and by steaks and potatoes. (Our Target has a grocery.) We thought we were being slick knocking out errands in one stop, but we couldn’t return the rug and the potatoes made us sick.
So sick.
We felt fine until we woke up Sunday morning. I couldn’t go to church, but the Mister tried. He made is half way through the mass (“I could smell the perfume of every single old lady there, and it made me want to puke.”) before he pulled Mikey out of the choir and headed home–with a stop at a gas station bathroom on the way.
So, so sick.
We know it was the potatoes, and figure the skins were tainted in the same way spinach or other vegetables get contaminated. We’re both bitter. To get food poisoning as bad as we did from a scrubbed� baked potato seems monumentally unfair. Fried fish, tacos, greasy Chinese food, sushi, and even old pizza: these are the foods that are supposed lay you out on the cold floor of your bathroom floor. There’s a certain balance, and fairness to the pain. You bite into fried shrimp knowing, in a small way, that the crunchy, hot exterior may later rip your gastrointestinal system to shreds.
But a scrubbed potato zapped in the microwave and topped with a modest amount of organic butter? That’s just not right.
Yuck!! So sorry – and monumentally unfair! Hope you are feeling better.
Eeh. You’re right. You were robbed. Also, thinking of being sick in a gas station restroom makes me feel sick. So wrong, on so many levels . . .
I was totally robbed! And, yes, I can’t believe he had to pull over and get sick at a gas station.
Hey, that’s me – yay! Thanks, Jules. I hope you and the Mister are feeling much better today. :)
I got your address and will forward it to Susan!
Oh that sucks! At least you have a gorgeous rug???
I have not had food poisoning from Target produce, but every time I try to be slick and buy produce there to avoid going to the market, it is always awful. Never tastes fresh and usually goes bad within a couple of days. How do you know it wasn’t the meat though?
We figure it was the potato because I ate more steak and spinach salad but picked at my potato (I don’t like them). He ate the whole potato, skin and all (he loves them). He was more sick than I was.
I would be very very bitter, too! Hope you’re feeling much, much better. The closest I’ve ever come to passing out in my life was during a bout of food poisoning. (Also a home cooked meal.)
It sucks. I wanted to die at the boys’ baseball games last night.
Oh, that is truly terrible, and not even the least bit satisfactory…at least with tantalizing naughty food, your stomach revolts for good reason – but the meagre potato, cruel and holy unfair. Our daughter had a bout of food poisoning last week, we all ate the same thing, but only she got sick…and it was lovely fresh salmon – cannot figure it out, how did she fall ill, and the rest of us were spared? Worse yet, will she no longer like salmon? Argh…only time will tell.
The rug, on the other hand, is phenomenal (yay craigslist!).
Exactly.
The rug looks soooo good in the hallway!
So unfair. Hope you are all on the mend!
I’ve never had food poisoning and know that I’m due someday. My willingness to eat just about anything will soon catch up with me, but I would be particularly bitter if it comes from a potato.
I’m doing better today. I’m an adventurous eater, too, which is why the potato thing really chaps my hide.
I, too, got violently ill with food poisoning for the very first time in my life; lasting at least 6-7 hrs. First I started throwing up, then (unpleasantly) the other end started ‘throwing up’; many times at the same time…:( The potato I ate was baked; cooked by me and about 5-6 weeks old (it had been refrigerated). It SEEMED ok; no green or eyes on it. I ate one which gave me no problem but the next day at lunch I ate a larger one and about 5-6 pm, I started feeling really ill. Spent the next 13 hrs. in bed; at least 6 of them running to the bathroom. My first carb choices are bread and noodles, with rice and potatoes coming in second. I think I’m sticking to bread and noodles now…that was a horrendous experience. BTW, the potatoes came from a local supermarket chain (no, not Walmart). I don’t think that matters; either way they were old and I took a chance. I am no longer “Cast Iron Stomach”. :(
Oh yeah, that is unfair! To be punished for being good! Felt the same way recently when I ordered something off a gluten-free menu that wasn’t (and spent the afternoon in the bathroom). Hope you’re all doing better now.
Oh no! That must be hard, never really knowing whether something is going to be safe for you.
I recently got sick from lemons that I had washed before putting in my tea. I had extreme vertigo, so I think it was pesticide rather than bacteria. But still. It frightens me what they do to our food!
I bought a lime at Target, too, and I tossed it in the trash after I read your comment. Nothing is safe!
Yikes! Sorry to hear that. I once got really sick from some fresh pineapple. Only recently have I mustered the courage to eat it again!
I really hope you feel better. Drink lots of water!
Pineapple! Is nothing sacred?
Did you use gravy on the meat?
Also, was butter from Organic Pastures?
Glad you feel better.
Excited to see photos of the rug.
No gravy on the steak, and the butter is Trader Joe’s Organic Butter brand. There is news on Organic Pastures?
http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2012/01/test-results-show-organic-pastures-link-to-outbreak/
Not that my opinion was solicited, but the spinach salad much more likely culprit. I think potatoe is being framed and getting bad rap. I assume it was raw spinach?
That’s funny, because the raw milk people are always so adamant about how safe raw products are for consumption, and that they are never linked to any outbreaks.
It wasn’t the spinach. We had been eating from the same bag for two days without a problem and I had far more spinach and steak than he did, but he got more sick. The only difference in what we ate was the potato quantity. He ate everything, including the skin. I just picked at mine.
Seriously, how does one get food poisoning from a scrubbed, nuked potato? That doesn’t seem right. Personally, I’d be eyeballing the steak!
Hope you feel better – that really stinks!
Oh, so sorry. That is not right. At all. Hope you are feeling better soon!
I feel good today! The morning was dicey, but as the day moves on I get perkier and perkier. :)
So, So sorry to hear about your incident. Food poisoning is awful, awful, awful. The last two times I had it was with the same food no less (completely different sources years apart). You can bet I don’t eat cream of broccoli soup anymore.
Gah! Cream of Broccoli soup!! Just the name inspires images of destruction…
I am glad to hear you are on the mend. And this has very much shut the barn door on Target potatoes for me. I rarely buy produce there (we’re lucky to live close to good produce spots) but every once in a while, it’s so cheap and convenient, I cave.
Last time I caved on the potatoes, I was sorry. Not as sorry as you–but sorry enough. They were gross and not especially usable and I learned my lesson.
Hang in there.
Agree. Since we were returning a rug, I thought I’d be slick and do everything in one store. Never again. Ugh.
UGH. Food poisoning is the worst. My husband and I both were sick from (we think) lettuce at a sandwich shop once. We deduced that because our 1-year-old ate all the same things we did EXCEPT the lettuce, and she never got sick (thank God) but we were both sick as dogs. It was one of the worst illnesses I can remember having, really.
You can actually get “food poisoning” from bacteria on a bathroom door handle, or from ice in an ice machine (usually from contaminated containers used as the ice is carried from the back of the restaurant to the soda machine at the front), too. It’s one of those things where you can never know for sure unless you get tested, I guess.