funnystrange.com

So yesterday afternoon I decided to have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch. I've recently rediscovered my love for peanut butter and jelly. Except that I always use strawberry jam, not jelly. I had just bought a new jar of sugar-free strawberry jam. Opened it up and stuck the spoon in, only to find that the jam was a liquid. It hadn't set at all. I was puzzling this out, trying to figure out what to do about my sandwich, and without thinking I put the spoon in my mouth. Ack! Immediately started having panicked visions of coming down with food poisoning or botulism right before the trip.

It didn't taste spoiled, just a bit weird, and the jar was definitely sealed when I opened it. Besides, I clearly don't have food poisoning or I would have been sick last night. (The 3-6 hours after eating questionable food are the worst time! Sitting there waiting to get headachy and nauseous.) I looked up botulism on WebMD and they said there are only about 25 cases caused by food a year in the US. Which suggests that it's not all that easy to get. I bet you have to eat much more of a tainted food than I did. All I ate was the amount coating the spoon, probably about a 1/4 teaspoon or less.

Georg said he thought the jam mostly likely was improperly made, not improperly canned. In other words they probably left out the pectin. Which makes it no good to eat, but not unsafe. I called the low carb store and told them about it. She went and looked on the shelf, found another couple jars like that and said she'd take them all off the shelf until they could sort it out. And she said I could come back after my trip to get a replacement or refund, since I don't have time to deal with it now. They're really nice at that low carb store.

It's been 18 hours, and if I were going to develop symptoms of botulism I probably would have by now. Whew!