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1. Loved watching the old barn being brought back to true/level with the cables via boingboing.net.

2. See? This is exactly why I will not eat hamburger or any beef or other meat that is not cooked long and well at a high temperature!

   My friends make fun of me and my aversion to pink meat and juices flowing from beef. A friend invited me and a guy over to her home every week. Every week we had filet mignon her husband grilled. Finally, she became angry that I ruined expensive meat because I insisted the piece be split open and mashed and cooked beyond recognition. Mine went on first and came off last.

   One time not related to her meat, I visited the bathroom for 50 hours, throwing up and having diarrhea continuously AND simultaneously for 50 hours. I was disoriented and dizzy. Finally, I drove (at night and in the rain) myself an hour to an ER that has a better reputation than ours. Yes, I was still having both problems as I drove. I was ill, very ill and do not know what I ate.

   It pays to be careful even when people ridicule and eat meat with blood running or just pink. I am careful with everything I eat. At a bbq I am the person who meanders over as the meat is put on the grill. I ask point blank if that meat platter needs to go to the kitchen and is there one for the cooked meat. I offer to wash it once inside. I don’t want someone handling it and then raw vegetables or a dish already prepared. If the cook does not have another platter, I insist I remove the raw meat platter and get a new one. On this one issue, I am very persistent.

   • Yep. You have to use a thermometer. Studies have shown that you just can’t tell by color. It’s especially important to check temp with ground meat. I may come off as being paranoid by re-posting all this food safety info, but I really don’t like food poisoning. It’s a lot more common than people think. “Stomach flu” is usually some kind of food poisoning.

3. I don’t have a meat thermometer. I may get one just to see how I am doing. I know people who say the whole family gets stomach flu all the time. There is no such thing as stomach flu–say the doctors. People are careless. Botulism can be killed by high heat, but the toxins cannot. So, taking care of meat before and after cooking is just as important as getting it to the proper temperature.

   I know a man whose brother came down with something at camp Lejeune when he was sent there. He stayed ill for a year while everyone else recovered, had his large intestine removed a few years later, and died from complications 20 years after the first symptoms of his “stomach flu.”

   Do you think I am a bit paranoid?

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