Poems, Science

Ice Virus Soup

65 Comments

A French research team plans to wake up an ancient virus to study its genetic structure.

This comes as a huge surprise to me.  I’m a cable-connected-American, so the only French people I ever see are on the Food Channel, fighting over condiments.

I had no idea they could be scientists too!

But why would such a person try to revive a virus embedded in a cake of ice?

Only one reason I can think of – glacial ice is a surprise ingredient, thrown in at the last minute to heighten the souffle’ challenge! Leave it to the crafty French to know the secret – bring out the hidden viral flavors and this frosty addition to an ordinary recipe will be a memory-maker.

And (maybe) a killer!

I commissioned Trail Baboon poet laureate Tyler Schuyler Wyler to respond to this story with a few lines of simplistic verse, and although he thought his inept rhymes might sicken a few unsuspecting readers, he did it anyway – because there was money involved.

 

One wonders – What forgotten woes
reside inside what once was froze?
Old viruses, encased in ices!
Are they strong, like southern spices?

Let’s research it! Here’s the deal –
I will dump some on your meal
and then take notes as you complain
about the fever in your brain!

Science is a lot like cooking.
Tasting, testing, always looking
for the flavor of the day.
inside a pathogen souffle!

That’s the foodie’s fondest wish
uncover some forgotten dish
of which we all are unaware
and dress it up as modern fare –

Like Hepatitis Cassoulet
and Dengue Fever au Flambe’
Chicken in a Herpes Glaze
with fresh Ebola Bouillabaisse.

Mononucleosis Stew
and Influenza Dip au jus,
Spicy Cowpox over rice.
with Meningitis Torte sounds nice.

Steaming viral soup selections.
Tasty, trendy mass infections
locked in ice. Forgotten. Dated.
Soon you’ll see them nicely plated!

What food makes you sick?

65 thoughts on “Ice Virus Soup”

  1. Ok. First I thought the title was Ice VERSUS Soup and was about seasonal food shifting from popsicles to chili.

    Then I realized my mistake, read the post and discovered it IS about food.

    Got sick once as a child after eating egg foo yung. Have not been able to consider it since. Otherwise I can tolerate just about anything.

    Off to make the morning coffee. Always safe and satisfying.

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  2. “woes, froze” Love it.

    Pineapple doesn’t like me. Even just pineapple juice. This is no fun at all in Hawaii. And it’s made worse by the fact that I do LIKE pineapple. Sometimes I go for it anyway, always with Rolaids on hand!!

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  3. With apologies to Charlie Pride. Adapted from Kaw-liga
    “Coli germ was a one-celled animal lying on the floor.
    He fell in love with the hamburger patty over in the grocery store.
    Coli germ!!! E-Coli!!!
    Just waiting there hoping he can grow
    In the gullet of some unsuspecting soul.
    Poor old Coli germ!
    His fate has come to this
    Poor old Coli germ!
    Now in pathogen abyss
    There’s no need to wonder ’bout beef to feed your head.
    A hundred sixty degrees
    Bacteria is dead.”

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  4. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    Dale, you are back! Nice to see some Dale poetry. I can almost feel Dr. Kyle lurking in the background.

    Anything yeast or mold related makes me have an allergic reaction. Yes this is a pain: blue cheese, yoghurt, bread, beer, wine, pickles–anything fermented. This even applies to probiotics. I both need them and am allergic to them. My sibs and I thank our dad for this allergic streak.

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  5. A number of years ago a good friend had invited me over for lunch. My heart sank when I saw she had made split pea soup, which I have never liked. I managed to eat most of it. Later that evening I was violently ill – don’t know if it was the soup or some tummy bug, but now I can barely look at split pea soup and certainly can’t imagine eating it.

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      3. Wessew, she still is a good friend. She didn’t get sick so I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the soup. But it is still on my list of scary foods (stuff I won’t eat like oysters on the half shell, chow mein, most anything that lives in water except salmon & some shrimp, curried anything, refried beans,mushrooms to name a few).

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  6. I am glad I was not drinking my coffee when I got to hepatitis cassoulet. Not appetizing reading in the morning, but the sort of silliness I need to jump start what promises to be a long day.

    As for food that I should not eat (or cannot) – that list is short. Though after a stomach virus that hit on Thanksgiving weekend, I couldn’t go near pumpkin pie for about a decade. Sad thing is, I like pumpkin pie, but the smell of it made me woozy. Thankfully, I finally got over it.

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    2. This is a hard time of year for me with everyone “pumpkin-izing” their menus. While I don’t dislike pumpkin, I’m not crazy about it and I haven’t had pumpkin pie in decades. After a few years in the bakery business and surviving those Novembers and Decembers, the big pumpkin pie months, I just can’t bring myself to eat it!

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  7. I am not allergic to anything (knock wood) nor did I ever have a GI-event that was explained by any specific food (or I have forgotten that I did).
    As a child, the one thing I could not eat was Glazed Carrots – cooked carrots served in some brown sugar sauce. Sounds innocuous but I couldn’t stand it.

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    2. My father tried to bribe me to eat asparagus. I don’t remember that it worked. But as an adult I paid $2.50 for two white asparagus at a fancy San Francisco restaurant. And one of the first things I planted when I moved to the farm was asparagus….and still happily harvesting it each spring. Caveat: My mother cooked the asparagus to a grayish mush. I sauté it briefly and eat it when it is still crisp and bright green.

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  8. thanks loads
    I am a vegetarian who eats no meat fish or fowl, recently discovering life is better with gluten free and dairy awareness as to ingredient inclusion. now I need to think about a position on bacteria carrying foods, yogurts breads and “live stuff” have been a plus and I have always considered bacteria resistance as a strengthening excersize but if we are going the Jurassic park route I may need to add certain bacterial critters to my do not do list? I recently went into a panera bread joint and told the guy I was looking for gluten free. he pulled out a menu and started reading about chicken
    I told him I was a veggie and he looked at me like the dog with his head cocked sideways… really? now I need to think about the germ worm factor. umm umm good

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  9. I thought I’d have to duck this question, but then remembered this. I have a strong stomach. The last time I vomited was after a party near Thunder Bay, Ontario. I remember the evening well, up to a point. I consumed some home-grown pot that night, some hashish, a great many beers, some white wine and a helping of lake trout (a fatty fish) cooked slowly in butter. Gee, the things young folks do! I got sick. But I learned my lesson, and I’ve strictly avoided lake trout simmered in butter since then.

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    1. Interesting. I was just thinking that the lake trout sounded delicious. But maybe simmering it in butter made it too rich.

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  10. Well, speaking of viruses (as it happens), I just got back from the doctor and he confirmed my suspicion. I’ve got shingles. Looks like a fun week for me…

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    6. Been there a time and a half (not diagnosed the second time as it seemed sort of like shingles but the symptoms weren’t exactly right). I hope they are on your trunk rather than on your head. And that you can nip it pretty much in the bud.

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  11. That is kind of disturbing, Dale, that they can’t leave well enough alone in the ice, there. “Oh, we can control that…”

    My childhood got-sick-on was licorice, which I can avoid easily enough, but the flavor is in all kinds of herbal teas that I would otherwise drink.

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  12. I have a wide tolerance for many different foods. Got sick on too much sweet corn when I was a kid, but it hasn’t deterred me from still loving it fresh from the stalk with lots of butter.

    But. I have a friend who can truly eat anything and everything, including his foray in southeast Asia eating duck bills (or was it feet?) and octopus so fresh a sucker stuck to the roof of his mouth.

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  13. Only foods I like, of course, many name already. SP soup, peanut butter/peanuts, Lute fiske, baked beans, chocolate, etc. etc. my FM makes me sensitive to the smell of some foods like beets and asparagus. Sandy had a long long list.

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  16. Dale/Tyler S.W: that is inspired poetry — awesome! As for me, I can (and will) eat just about anything. GI events don’t deter me. I remember getting gloriously drunk when I turned 18 (when that was the drinking age in Wisconsin), making an idiot of myself while sitting at the bar and then throwing up in the bathroom. I was never much for drinking and generally don’t touch alcohol at all, except for a VERY occasional half glass of wine. I don’t like how it makes me feel. Don’t like feeling drunk and out of control.

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    2. I’m pretty sure in Wisconsin the rule is you can’t officially make an idiot out of yourself if you’re thoughtful enough, after sitting at the bar, to go in the bathroom to vomit. Vomiting at the bar and then sitting in the bathroom is what a Wisconsin idiot does.

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      1. Dale, you are far too kind. I was sitting at the bar talking to myself, laughing at my own jokes, etc. When I danced with a guy, I was all over him. A total floozie … but, yes, at least I was thoughtful. 🙂

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    1. If Dale has already set you up, you should have a little pencil in your upper right hand corner? It might come up w/ an “oops” message but if you ignore that, it shouldn’t be a problem. Cut and paste your story in then in the bottom right corner there is a “submit” (or something like that button… can’t remember off the top of my head). Then Dale pushes the actual publish button at some point.

      If Dale hasn’t set you up then sent it to his email and he can get you going….

      Hope I’m not mis-speaking, Dale!!

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        1. you can just ignore the “oops.” just carry on as if you have the authority to write a post and it works out.

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      2. Well, I know I have said this before, but I don’t have a pencil icon and I submitted a post anyway (at least i think I did) by going to the My Site button on the upper left of the screen. It says it is pending.

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        1. I don’t have a pencil icon either and I have had no problem submitting a post. My problem is getting around to writing the posts.

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  18. My son will not eat minestrone with cabbage in it because when he was about six I wound’t let him leave the table without eating the minestrone I had given him. It was pretty dumb of me to get into a power struggle like that.

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    1. I don’t think anybody gets through their childhood without a food power struggle. (Mine was canned spinach.)

      I tried to get around some of this with sneaky psychology. If Child was presented with something new or that she was showing resistance to, I told her “oh, well you liked it the last time we had it”. This worked for WAY longer than I thought it would (up until she was 9 or 10)!

      And if she was not eating, we would do a “just take three more bites or four more bites” deal. But then I always had to say “and not little mouse bites” which she thought was funny enough that it would divert her from the issue. Usually got enough into her that she wasn’t hungry in an hour!

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      2. I cannot remember anything the s&h would not eat. Loved bacon until he found out where it came from. Hasn’t touched the stuff since.

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  19. I can’t think of a food I won’t eat or can’t tolerate. Lucky that way. Husband, on the other hand, won’t eat fish (except for canned tuna) because of being forced to eat fried herring every Friday during his childhood.

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  20. Ebola Bouillabaisse kinda rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?

    If it’s actually on the menu, though….you first.

    Any food aversions I’ve had I can usually get over by being rational. I remember once having an aversion to lasagna temporarily after a stomach thing. But if you wait a few months and go back to a food when you’re hungry, you can usually turn it around pretty easily.

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  21. Several years ago there were an unusual number of people diagnosed with hyperthyroidism around Luverne. It was serious enought that the CDC investigated. They found that all the sufferers got their hamburger from the butcher shop in Beaver Creek, a small town about 6 miles from Luverne, and that the butcher was tossing the cow thyroids in with the hamburger mix to make it richer. Well, the CDC put a stop to that practice.

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  22. I will eat almost anything. I do try to avoid eating food that is spoiled or eating raw food that should be cooked. Raw fish seems to me like something that should not be consumed. I know some people like sushi. I’ve avoided eating sushi. I think it might not agree with me and I would have the same problem that Pat Donahue described in the Icky-yucky Sushi song.

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    1. Jim, that’s really too bad. Sushi – in my opinion – can be really delicious. Not at all what you’d imagine raw fish to taste like. Seriously, try it, it’s wonderful, and the texture is really surprising.

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  24. Mold. Blue cheese, or is it bleu cheese, gorgonzola, and stuff like that make me gag. I’m not sure how much of it is psychological and how much is physiological, but I just can’t eat it.

    I also can’t eat canned tuna, due to a sick reaction 20+ years ago. *Shudder.* It often takes some time for me to be able to again enjoy a food that I’ve puked up, but I don’t think I will ever get over that one.

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