Ricotta Cheese and the Viking who made it all better
I cooked the most beautiful lasagna of my life last week- fresh pasta- hidden grated vegetables and despite being pregnant I used light ricotta cheese, parmesan and milk as a healthy alternative to whitesauce..
STOP- Ricotta Cheese?
Isn’t that soft cheese? YES! Did that occur to my lasagna loving brain NO.. no it clearly didn’t.. It doesn’t look that soft.. well in hindsight it does.. but soft cheese to me is more camembert and brie.. 2 other former great loves of my life.
3rd Baby Mentality
SO- its our 3rd baby and I can tell you- if this was my first, I would have investigated this ricotta character a bit more carefully and it would not have passed my lips. For our first, Christmas ham, even freshly cut was off the menu and takeaway was always out of bounds in case of potential contamination..
Fast forward to the 3rd child and I am lucky if I can tell you how many weeks I am- if xmas was tomorrow I would probably be eating xmas ham.. SO I DO question if I had known that Ricotta was a soft cheese- knowing that I was cooking it- would I have eaten it anyway? But really that isn’t the issue- as you will see
<Dinner time- the most yummiest lasagna was eaten.. by myself, my husband and my 2yr old>
The Punchline..
So I woke up the day after.. feeling good- off to the Ekka and thought I would have some scrambled eggs for extra energy and as I opened the fridge to pull out the egg carton my hand brushed a carton of… Ricotta..
STOP! Ricotta Cheese?
That’s odd I thought.. oh and it’s a full unopened container.. My heart stopped.. and I opened the bin and eyed the empty container from last night.. I picked it up, scrunched my face up and read these dreaded words Exp July 1st!!!
So I won’t go on about the details of listeria- and all the bad stuff that comes from it- but I rang 13health followed by my doctor to get the earliest appointment I could get, at 3pm that day- loving our health system…
So I did what any obviously
The Doctor
It was a new doctor and as my boys ran in with their shrieks of post sugar goodness I saw the look already. Master 4 explained ‘mummy ate some bad cheese- and the baby might have eaten it so that’s why we are here’ .. The Doctor proceeded to take my temp- its normal.. he asked me if I felt ok- I did! Well as good as a worrying mum can- but no- I didn’t have obvious food poisoning..none of us did
It seemed the doctor knew nothing about listeria so I gave him the fact sheet from 13health.. I said I wasn’t going to wait 2 months to get flu like symptoms and err on the side of caution- I wanted antibiotics.
So rather than believing the 13 health factsheet (because according to him 13health is a waste of space)… he decided to ring some ob’s ..and he let me know he would leave the room to do this as it would be impossible to be heard over my crazy Brisbane kids..
so would you believe 45 minutes later..
The Doctors Room..still
At this point the room we were in was facing destruction- the bed was continuously stripped of its bedding and remade by yours truly and master 2 managed to wedge himself somehow underneath the bed so I have to extricate him out which took a good 2-3 minutes.. master 4 insisted on playing ‘round and round and on the ground’ at his only voice volume ‘loud’ so 45 minutes later.. as the doctor opened the door I was ready to go to the ‘crappier’ doctors down the road that you can walk in and get an appt on the spot and will hand you any drug when you ask..
The verdict
Long story short.. I didn’t just eat a naughty piece of camembert cheese at a party without realizing.. but it is still such a slight chance.. almost one in a million chance of getting listeria.. because apparently in the whole of Australia there are about 80 cases a year (or some small amount) and mainly in old people. The question for me were.. where was it packaged? did the packager wash their hands? blahblahblah- anyhoo both ob’s gave approval for antibiotics based on the face that by the time you even get listeria it is generally too late to do anything about it anyway.. so if I was feeling paranoid then I should do it.. my choice they said..mm reassuring.. so I took the script and in seven days I will feel better about the whole thing..
The lesson learnt
Clean out my fridge more often.. and remember that 2 kids at the doctors surgery post ekka is never ever going to be a good thing with or without the extra worry of ricotta cheese ..
The ending..
As we walked (aka shrieked) out into the waiting room- with master 4 in his Viking outfit (did I fail to mention that?)- i saw many an old woman and mother look at my belly, look at the boys and I felt them wonder.. WHY? Why another one…
And I thought.. well… because at that point I didn’t have an answer.. but my 4 year old did… Cmon mummy.. lets go… and he took my hand.. and that is enough of an answer for me.. the stress.. the worry ..the mistakes and the everything.. is made better by that little hand in mine
