What's good about my food limitations...

I am sort of like Pollyanna if, in addition to her perpetual optimism, she also had occasional bouts of anxiety and mild depression. :) ...which she did, actually, until all of her friends and loved ones gathered 'round to help her remember the reasons she had to be glad.

Having my food world grow more and more narrow has been difficult. I'm not a trend-follower, but someone seeking answers to my health issues and going with the things that seem to help.

Sometimes, it gets very hard.

So...I try (like Pollyanna) to find reasons to be glad.

Here is one reason that living within these parameters is good:

I can eat all the raw cookie dough I want, and have no fears about salmonella poisoning! :D

Because all of my baking is essentially vegan (because I don't do dairy or eggs), it is perfectly safe to sample when it's raw. :)

Anytime I take a pinch of cookie dough, I smile and think, "I couldn't do this if it had eggs in it!"


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The salmonella thing is real, unfortunately. I used to be a cookie dough rebel, scoffing at the danger. ...until my sister's friend and both her parents ended up in the emergency room, severely ill with salmonella, from eating raw cookie dough. oh. Okay.
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Why raw eggs can sit out in Europe, but not in the U.S.: I have seen and heard much debate on this subject. It can get pretty funny, with people here in the U.S. being portrayed as big egg "sissies" who are much too over-protective of their food. As it turns out, there's a good reason for keeping our eggs in the fridge. In Europe, eggs still have their natural waxy coating, so they are impermeable. They can safely sit out on a counter and not spoil. Here in the U.S. eggs are washed in such a way that the coating is removed, making it necessary to keep them cold to preserve freshness.
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Who is Pollyanna? For those who may not know, Pollyanna is a character from a book by that name, written many years ago by Eleanor H. Porter. It was also made into a movie, decades ago, with Hayley Mills starring as Pollyanna, and I've just discovered that a new movie of the story was made in 2004. Essentially, Pollyanna was a girl who believed the best of people, and always tried to find reasons to be glad and thankful, even when life was hard.