<p>I once made a peach pie using a frozen crust and forgot to take off the layer of wax paper that separated the two crusts in the package. Pie was hard to slice, for some strange reason…</p>
<p>Noone died. It is part of the family lore now.</p>
<p>A wriggling lobster is the tail of a lobster, cut off, pulled from its shell and usually stuck standing up. It is to me hideous. </p>
<p>The idea of wriggling shrimp is you feel them as they go down. Again, not my thing.</p>
<p>We have all had our share of cooking fiascos. My most recent one was just three days ago. Bless his heart, H just found it hysterically funny. He helped me dispose of the evidence. S once made shortbread that had a ton too much flour sitting at the bottom of the pan. We each smiled and ate a bit and then tossed the rest in the trash. </p>
<p>To me, sharing these little missteps makes us all more human and closer. :)</p>
<p>I cooked a turkey with giblets inside, many years ago! When I was first learning to cook, decades ago, I made spaghetti sauce from a friend’s mother’s best recipe, except that I put in two whole heads of garlic. I thought a “clove” meant the whole thing. My mother only used garlic powder.</p>
<p>More recently, I made a pie and left out the sugar. Great disappointment for my sons!</p>
<p>" She also told me that to be sold frozen here, it would have had to pass US inspections."</p>
<p>Well, I can tell you, having worked on prawn issues for the last two decades, the bag may have a USDA stamp on it from some remote location, but NO shrimp actually received U.S. inspection. In fact, most of the time, in the case of shrimp from Asia, you can’t even tell the country of origin. Most commonly it will say, “Packed in the Phililppines” - well, 98% of the Phillipine shrimp industry was wiped out in 1994 by the Norwalk virus, leaving the world’s largest packing plant, supposedly “inspected by the USDA” behind.</p>
<p>Raw or cooked should be the least of your worries. The shrimp may have been grown in water treated with chloramphenicol, a major cancer-causing agent, banned in all of Europe for more than a decade, as are most imported shrimp. Here, the USDA doesn’t even test for it. (They have more recently, in imported Chinese honey.)</p>
<p>^^Which is why my beef and pork come from my backyard :)</p>
<p>I have done the giblet in the turkey thing, more than once 
and dang, that turkey was from my backyard too, although that year I paid someone to butcher it.</p>
<p>mini, more likely, shrimp can be contaminated with malachite green, which is used as a fungicide in aquaculture.</p>
<p>My H reminds me I made pancakes a couple of weeks ago, and got confused about the containers we used to store things. I used plain flour instead of pancake mix. I don’t recommend doing that.</p>
<p>Scary stuff that could be lurking in our food:</p>
<p>[Prohibited</a> Antimicrobial Agents in Seafood](<a href=“http://safeseafood.ucdavis.edu/assay_methods.htm]Prohibited”>http://safeseafood.ucdavis.edu/assay_methods.htm)</p>
<p>Reminded of the time here, when a friend and I were camping on a Mexican beach, and befriended some fisherman. We watched as they cut up the shrimp, added tomatoes, lime juice, spices, and then asked us to eat it with them. We were shocked-raw? This was before ceviche was known in this country. </p>
<p>Now, one of my Ss favorite foods, and he’s had it in various slightly suspect locations with no ill effect. Supposedly the lime juice “cooks” the shrimp. Well, I don’t entirely buy that theory.</p>
<p>Lime juice does “cook” protein-rich foods by chemically breaking proteins into smaller chunks (similar to what heat does).</p>
<p>This shrimp was wild, from Argentina. I hope it doesn’t have anything awful in it.</p>
<p>I cooked the leftovers tonight. They turned very, very white - whiter than most shrimp do.</p>
<p>“mini, more likely, shrimp can be contaminated with malachite green, which is used as a fungicide in aquaculture.”</p>
<p>No, we have actually have test results from 22 countries. The most common is chloramphenicol. But I have a full list if you’d like. (It is published in the book “Color of Freedom”, which I edited, and to which I wrote the introduction.)</p>
<p>Interesting, thanks, mini. I’m involved with a company developing food testing methods (what an uphill battle it really is because there is a strong opposition to more testing). Malachite green is one of the biggest concerns in farmed seafood at the present time, apparently. Chloramphenicol is up there, too, but there is more awareness. </p>
<p>Do not mean to scare you, NYMom. An occasional shrimp dinner is not going to cause harm. :)</p>
<p>Back in the 70’s I put a pot pie in the oven in the box. </p>
<p>Didn’t go so well.</p>
<p>^^Looks like we’ve got our “bad dinner” winner. 
I hope the house did not burn down. :eek:
Lol. :)</p>
<p>Are you afraid of your sons? Such an odd thing to talk about trust in this case. I find that somehow worse than a mistake in the kitchen. </p>
<p>Does it always have to be perfect?</p>
<p>Ever since mini first mentioned the international farmed shrimp issues, a few years ago-- well, now I try to be vigilant (and I swear I remember mini each time.) So is the safe bet domestic wild? Argentine ok? How do we know about the processing plant?</p>
<p>All coldwater shrimp are okay. All wild caught domestic seems to be okay (I don;t know what to think about the Gulf - there are so many reasons why inspectors would look the other way, or simply be overworked.) I haven’t followed domestic production since Katrina (so much of it was destroyed.)</p>
<p>I really don’t know anything about Argentina. (Ecuador and Peru are suspect, as I remember.)</p>
<p>Mini, what about farm-raised raw shrimp sold in Costco? The package says it’s chemical free and there are no preservatives.</p>