December 27, 2003

A recipe for eggnog. [NY Times, registration required] What impressed me the most about this recipe and Amanda Hesser's accompanying article was the lack of dietary paranoia, specifically, the absence of the nanny-like fussing over the public health menace of raw egg whites or yolks that usually accompanies eggnog recipes. I reckon traditional eggnog to be safer than driving, for healthy adults, anyway.

None of this is meant to claim driving as some sort of metric standard for safety, but it's an almost universal reference point. My back of the envelope numbers: 1 in 20,000 poultry eggs sold in North America are infected with S. enteritidis. (Hopefully Kiwi and Oz eggs are cleaner than ours.) Any loaded egg has a 25% chance of being lively enough to inflict salmonellosis. Any case of salmonellosis has a 6% chance of sending its victim to a physician for "food poisoning" or worse. The USA had 4,563,000 ER visits secondary to auto accidents in the year 2000; I divide that into roughly 130 million drivers (extrapolating from population and automobile ownership statistics), each driving 5 "times" (chances of an accident) a week, 50 weeks a year. My back of the envelope summary: stay off the road on New Year's Eve (duh!) and enjoy traditional eggnog.

posted by goetter 21 years ago
  • OR: Take a cab in the first place. Don't DRINK EGGS Seriously, and respectfully goetter, easy. Any loaded egg has a 25% chance of being lively enough to inflict salmonellosis . Um, I was a country boy, (took the eggs from the angry hens myself) yet to see a "lively" or a "loaded" egg. I like your using math but...well... No worries the brown eggs, um, stay away from the brown acid. And happy holidays. The latter is the one I mean the most.
  • For NYT: login: monkey404 Pass: monkey or: login: metafil Pass: metafil
  • took the eggs from the angry hens myself That's the 4-H neighbor kids' job. Me, I just eat 'em.
  • mmmmmmmm nooogggggggg..... re: the eggs, here's an interesting point: in scotland, folks don't refrigerate their eggs. eggs are sold unrefrigerated in stores. and they've even removed those little egg-holders from the inside of refrigerator doors so people won't keep their eggs in there. my scottish pal and i had quite the conversation about this. we cannot understand how in america, refrigerating eggs is an ABSOLUTE requirement, where in scotland, they're told to do just the opposite. can any UK mofites explain this? oh, and, of course, nog carols available on request. don't get me started.
  • Sorry, I'm not from the UK, but I don't refrigerate my eggs either. Eat them while they're fresh, and there isn't any need. Unless you desire cold egg, that is.
  • Wolof, in my opinion American eggs tend to have a strange taste to them: since I have started to be given them fresh from a friend who has chickens, all store bought eggs have a bad taste to them I cannot explain. However, I always refrigerate eggs.
  • They have a weird taste because they are fed weird food. I hope not to come back as a battery hen, even if I do deserve it.
  • Ah, poor chickens and poor cows - we've really allowed (in US) them to be, I dunno, maybe tortured to provide us food. Chickens may have the worst life, but, living in an agricultural area, I see dairy cows crowded into small, fenced lots with no pastures in sight. Their waste is shoveled into mounds, and the top cows get to stand on top of them. Except for a few producers, the happy cows of the California cheese ads, grazing on grass and enjoying foot massages don't exist. And the biggest feed lot for meat cattle in this area looks about the same, except that they have antiseptic spray rigs that try to keep the diseases down, but cover the cattle, as well as the waste, with who know what. I'm a carnivore, and I don't like PETA's stances, but I do think that one should respect our sources of food. Most of us can't raise our own chickens, much less cattle, but we can look for sources that show concern for them. And, yes, it's more expensive to buy from them, but it's better for your body and your soul. The only meat animals I know of that are still raised in the "old way" are sheep. Here in California, they're pastured on the stubble of grain and alfalfa fields or on marginal land which won't support agriculture. Their care takers are mostly Basque immigrants, or their descendents, who spend most of any year taking herds to good grazing, helping with the lambing season, and cooking wonderful food. Since we don't much like mutton here, only the excess lambs are slaughtered - and I thank those for their sacrifice.
  • Come and be a sheep in sunny Australia! We'll shove several thousand of you and your sheepy friends onto a boat and send you on an exciting trip to Saudi Arabia, where, in a not-unprecedented move, the Sauds will decide you are surplus to requirements, declare that you have scrapie, and refuse to honour the contract. You may then spend several weeks in baking heat on the touristic waters of the Gulf while people try to work out where the hell they are going to be able to offload you and finally slit your miserable throat. Still, broadens the mind and all that.
  • Still, broadens the mind and all that. Of the sheep? Before or after their throats get slit?