Oh, for the love of small furry kittens!

[siercia]

THIS! It's tis A quote from a domestic community that I belong to here on LiveJournal , as regards a chica posting asking for help in planning and cooking her firstThanksgiving Day meal... "very important to also not stuff the bird either, too dangerous.
People like this, spouting off like this are one of the things that I am simply going to have to rant about (hopefully tomorrow). Something tells me that if stuffing your turkey were so god-damned dangerous, there'd be a whole lot more dead people on the Friday after Thanksgiving. Call me skeptical, but I'll take my stuffing cooked in the bird, full of turkey fat.

Argh.

Comments

[reebert.livejournal.com]

I'm with you! I think in this day and age everyone is aware of the dangers of stuffing the bird on Monday and then cooking it on Thursday....for crying out loud!

[halleyscomet.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I wondered why I got sick eating that Sushi I'd left out on the counter over the weekend. Now I think I know.

(Yes, I am joking)

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

How on earth can you NOT put the stuffing in the turkey? OY!

[asmodel.livejournal.com]

Um.... what's dangerous about stuffing a turkey?

Granted I'm a veggo so I have no clue about cooking meat, but what is it?

[siercia]

Okay, the deal with stuffing a turkey is that if you do it improperly, there is an increased risk of bacterial contamination for a number of reasons, primarily because the stuffing will hold heat longer than the turkey and provides a good breeding ground for bacteria. However, following simple guidelines can neutralize most of the risk, without sacrificing the yummy-ness of bird cooked stuffing. Those would be - properly thaw and store the turkey before cooking, rinse out the cavity of the bird with cold water before stuffing, don't stuff until you're ready to put the bird in the oven, make sure both bird and stuffing are cooked to a proper temperature, and remove the stuffing before serving or storing the leftovers. Most of these precautions are ones you should take whether or not you're cooking a stuffed bird, and the idea that it's "too dangerous" to cook a stuffed bird is silly - if you follow standard food safety practices, the risk is minimal, never mind that for most healthy people, the "risk" here is illness of varying severity, and certainly not permanent damage or death.

This link explains it pretty well.

[halleyscomet.livejournal.com]

So, if we cook the bird they way you're supposed to cook bird, it's as safe as any other meat product.

If we do something stupid and lazy, we'll get sick.

Gee, I guess making beef jerky by leaving raw meat in my back pocket is a bad idea too.

And eating the tuna from Stop and Shop raw isn't such a hot idea either.

And of course Frying an entire turkey (http://www.rnews.com/Story.cfm?ID=6751&rnews_story_type=7) is a bad idea as well.

Part of the American need to ban anything that could take out the Darwin Award contenders. There must be a clutch of brain dead morons who read "With folded hands" and saw it as a model of the future instead of a dangerous threat of a terrible fate.

[siercia]

Oh dear God: There are no government standards for turkey fryers.

I for one, hope to the heavens there never will be. Christ!

What is this "With folded hands" of which you speak?

With Folded Hands

[halleyscomet.livejournal.com]

One of the more frightening sci-fi short stories I've encountered.

Thumbnail Version of Story:

Main character sells domestic robots. He's put out of business by a company making superior robots. Unfortunately, purchasing one of these fantastic robots requires you to sign a good deal of power over to the company that makes them. Soon it is learned that there are no humans left in the company, and the robots have taken their "Protect form harm" and "Make sure the human is happy" directives to the extreme. Humans who aren't happy are labatomized to "Make" them happy, and in order to keep them "safe" any activity that could harm them is forbidden. Hence the phrase "With folded hands." The main character's son is forbidden from playing football, and his pocket knife is confiscated. The wife can no longer cook (Remember, this is a 40's sci fi story) because she might cut or burn herself. They sit around all day twiddling their thumbs, afraid to do anything except pretend to be happy, or their frontal lobe will be sliced out.

The inventor of the robots comes to Earth and is aided by the main character mentioned above in a desperate attempt to take advantage of the robot's one weakness to destroy them. I wont tell you how it ends, as I intend to find my copy of the radio play one of these days. I've got it on a tape somewhere.

Did some more looking

[halleyscomet.livejournal.com]

Found a different description here (http://www.sfwriter.com/precarn.htm)

Not as famous as Asimov's Three Laws, but saying essentially the same thing, is Jack Williamson's "prime directive" from his series of stories about "the Humanoids," which were android robots created by a man named Sledge. The prime directive, first presented in Williamson's 1947 story "With Folded Hands," was simply that robots were "to serve and obey and guard men from harm." Now, note that date: the story was published in 1947. After the atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki just two years before, Williamson was looking for machines with built-in morality.

But, as so often happens in science fiction, the best intentions of engineers go awry. The humans in Williamson's "With Folded Hands" decide to get rid of the robots they've created, because the robots are suffocating them with kindness, not letting them do anything that might lead to harm. But the robots have their own ideas. They decide that not having themselves around would be bad for humans, and so, obeying their own prime directive quite literally, they perform brain surgery on their creator Sledge, removing the knowledge needed to deactivate themselves.

[binkiegirl.livejournal.com]

One is safe to assume that we've survived as a species this long...so a little stove top in your gobble gobble won't be the end of the world....

I'm not a fan of stuffed bird because I don't like all the remnants of inside organ meat getting all mixed up in my stuffing. I don't get how I seem to be getting more an more picky as I get older.

Maybe I *am* persnickety.

[dietbubba.livejournal.com]

I told you that you were persnickety.

[siercia]

There's nothing wrong with being persnickety.

[siercia]

I'm so glad to know I'm not the only person getting pickier and pickier as I get older.

I think Wiley might kill me for it son, though ;)

[halleyscomet.livejournal.com]

If it REALLY stars to get on his nerves, have me tall him about a woman I dated who is the single pickiest eater I've ever met.

No fruits and vegetables, EVER. No sauce on Pizza. BBQ sauce is ONLY permitted if it is Molasses free. All bread must be as tasteless as possible, as "It's just a holder for the meat and cheese." There's more, but I'll save it for another time.

[siercia]

I get tweaked about it more because the reaction seems so out of proportion to the warning and to the risk. Not the chosing to not eat it, because I'm a big fan of letting people evaluate and choose their own risks (or simple preferences, like not wanting bit of organ meat in their stuffing) but the chicken little reaction that ahappens when safety messages hit the general public - either because people are easily cared, or because the message is delievered in a way to blow the fear out of proportion (Tonight on the 10:00 News: Could your Thanksgiving turkey KILL YOU? ). You know what I mean?

It's a small to moderate food safety risk, I accept that. Make people aware of the risk, let them decide about it - don't run around yelling at people that they should NEVER EVER DO THIS because it's too dangerous when your only source is the local evening news.

[cfred.livejournal.com]

Right. The 10:00 news will never give you the full story in a teaser, and might give you most of the big points at 10:25.

Good Eats touched on the stuffing issue this weekend with their episode on pork chops. AB at least gave an enlightened lecture: the bird's cavity is processed, the stuffing touches the cavity, so the stuffing needs to come up to safe temperature--by which time, the white meat is overcooked. Of course, in the same episode, he said he likes his pork medium, since modern hog farms feed pigs on proper feed and not table scraps, so the risk of parasites is minimal.

Of course, for us, the stuffing controversy is a nonissue. There's only two of us for the holiday dinner, so we just do a turkey breast. :)

[halleyscomet.livejournal.com]

If one is REALLY worried, cook the stuffing for another ten of fifteen minutes after taking it out of the bird.

My mother never bothered coking th stuffing for extra time, and we never got sick from it. (knock on wood.)

[cfred.livejournal.com]

That solution makes entirely too much sense.

I mean, the stuffing has to come out before carving anyway. Why not stick it back in the oven while the carving goes on? Plus, it makes sure the stuffing is nice and warm.

[quiltlover.livejournal.com]

Oh Siercia, you do make me laugh!