So the peanut recall has faded into the night, and pistachios are the new way to contract salmonella from casual foods. Sure new peanut products are still being recalled, but it seems that 2009 is the year that the nut looses its status as a safe food with zero prep time. It really challenges your ability to rely on assumptions in preparing safe food for yourself or others when more people are getting sick from otherwise vegetarian nuts than from consuming raw or undercooked pork products.

A person can only imagine what George Washington Carver would do if he saw what has become of the nut industry in America that he worked so hard to build. Now the eighth amendment would likely prohibit this from being handed down as a criminal penalty, but would it be too much to suggest that the persons making the decisions leading to the national gastrointestinal disaster be made to lick lizards until they contract salmonella the conventional way. Maybe that could be worked into a civil penalty by means of a class action settlement. I have an opened jar of peanut butter in my cabinet from the pre-salmonella age of crushed nut products. The problem may arise that a lawyer probably won’t accept watching a bunch of executives lick lizards until they begin to vomit and experience diarrhea.

If more common foods keep getting recalled, it may actually make some sense to run any food through a deep fryer minutes before its intended consumption.