Cookie dough that’s safe to eat – good news…for some

Headline: Tollhouse shocks the Internet with surprise raw cookie dough announcement

Word ’round the kitchen is that Tollhouse is selling cookie dough that’s safe to eat. I suppose that means some people can start eating raw cookie dough now. As for me, I’ll continue to eat my cookie dough the old fashioned way: dangerously and often.

I know, I know, salmonella and E. coli. Food poisoning, diarrhea, nausea. I’m 47 years old and I’ve never once suffered from food poisoning which leads me to one conclusion: I’m immune.

How did this happen? I have to assume with the massive amounts of raw cookie dough, brownie and cake batter I’ve consumed since I was a child, my digestive system has sparred toe-to-toe with the two big hitters of food-born bacteria, won, developed antibodies and now I’m resistant. Or something. Come on! I’ve eaten more raw eggs than Rocky Balboa!

A quick DuckDuckGo* search inquiring, “Can a person build an immunity to salmonella?” yields a bunch of websites with random, very reliable because their profile pics look legit people answering the question with a resounding, and supportive: “yes you can!” Pair this information with my lifetime of observational research and I’d call that nothing short of a medical degree. That was easy!

Here’s the deal: I grew up in the seventies and eighties when helmets were for football, rear seat belts were for who-knows-what and pick-up trucks were for hauling every neighbor kid to Dairy Queen. Eating foods that threatened to give us seven days of diarrhea was par for the course, a day in the life. Who knows? It may have even been a brilliant parenting technique called, “Exposure Resiliency” or something. Either way, living on the edge of serious illness/injury instilled character, resilience and guts of steel. We were tough cookies, so to speak.** Nowadays, life’s a warning label.

According to my mom, I told my older sister when we were little, “You do the cookin’ and I’ll do the lickin’,” as we made cookies, cakes or brownies together. I needed the roles and expectations to be very clear, not to mention the path to lick the batter-laden bowls and beaters. I. Had. Dibs.

Anyone with an older sister can imagine her response: “Yeah, right. You might get some when I’m finished!” She has the immunity too.

My sister is also clever. Imagine my delight when she presented me with my birthday gift this year. That’s right – a container packed to the brim with glorious homemade cookie dough stored in ice. It seems she understood my cookin’ and lickin’ instructions from years ago, but don’t doubt for a second she didn’t get her fill first! Luckily for me, my sister also understands the value of keeping our “shots” up to date. Oh, didn’t I tell you? As a medical professional, I highly recommend regular consumption of raw cookie dough to keep those antibodies up. It’s super duper important.

In closing, I say to all of you new to the raw cookie dough eating world, welcome, sort of. I’m not sure waiting until it was “safe” to partake qualifies you to be included with the rest of us in the Raw Cookie Dough Connoisseur Club. You feel a little late to the table and might I say, snowflake-ish, but whatever. Maybe I too will check out the new cookie dough because I suppose if it’s safer to eat the “edible” stuff I probably should but why mess with the system? I don’t want to get sick or something.

*Tip: Use DuckDuckGo as your search engine and dump the snooping Google. DuckDuckGo doesn’t save your info and track your every move. See? I’m careful about the stuff that really matters.

**Yet nothing compares the toughness of the Greatest Generation. You folks are in a class all by yourself and deserve all-you-can-eat cookie dough for life!