Food poisoning: Part I of when good food goes bad

Things can go wrong when you're eating in a restaurant. Then you're left spitting an undercooked burger into a trash can or waiting in a 20-minute line when you're already late for work. It's time to take a look at the dark side of the food industry.

Getting sick of food isn't a big deal. Just eat something else. But getting sick from food can leave you with a permanent sour taste in your mouth.

Now, there are different varieties of food poisoning. Some of them are more severe than others. Last week I think I picked up one of the less-serious types.

But it's hard to be sure if you really have food poisoning, or even if you're sick. So I'm going to conceal the establishment that I believe passed me a little stomach-borne bug. I wouldn't want to unfairly ruin their reputation.

I picked up a tuna-sub at the unnamed establishment and began chowing down. Before I started I was pretty hungry for tuna. By the time I finished, I really didn't want to taste tuna for the rest of my life. That probably should have been a warning to stop eating.

Yet I continued to eat like some sort of little old lady swallowing a fly. I don't know why I did it, but I paid for it later.

Fortunately nothing came back up the hatch. My stomach just twisted itself into knots and rejected any notion of food. The next day was the killer, though. When I woke up in the morning, every muscle in my body ached and I couldn't shake that exhausted feeling. It was similar to dehydration or the sensation you get from a low-grade fever. Only the aches were worse and I drank plenty of water to rehydrate. Plus, I had a normal temperature.

It took a day before I started to feel better. That's a trademark of food poisoning: It doesn't last much more than 24 hours but makes you feel terrible.

Looking back, I can't be sure it was food poisoning. But it doesn't matter. I don't trust the tuna from this unnamed establishment anymore. And that's where the good food really went bad. I can no longer eat a meal I like because of a bad experience.

Let that be a lesson to you. When your tuna tastes fishy, throw it back. If you don't you could be up the creek without a paddle.

Chicken going South

McDonald's has a pretty good chicken thing going -- The McChicken. It isn't the tastiest bird meat you can get in a fast food joint, but it's the best feathered food you'll get for $1.

Too bad the Southern Style Chicken Sandwich doesn't stick to the formula that makes the McChicken so good. In other words, too bad it isn't cheap.

McDonald's took a slightly larger, higher quality piece of white meat and gave it some extra-fatty breading. As a result, biting into the Southern Style Chicken Sandwich is more like sinking your teeth into deep fried butter than eating any meat. It's just plain yummy.

Pickle lovers won't agree. A good Southern Style Chicken Sandwich should have some perfect pickles, and McDonald's doesn't oblige. There are two floppy thin wafers posing as pickles, and they aren't even crinkle cuts.

Even so it's a pretty good eat until you look at the receipt and go into sticker shock. Just buying the sandwich takes up the better part of three bucks! That's not counting any drink or fries.

You can buy three whole McChickens for that many greenbacks. Sure, a McChicken is a glorified chicken patty with more fat and some limpid shreds of lettuce. But it's cheap food, which is what McDonald's does best. Paying more than a buck for chicken at the golden arches ... it's just foul.

Pitting up with Cherry M&M's

I think the people at M&M's got their letters flipped with the new "Wild Cherry M&M's."

No, I'm not going to claim that some of my candies said "W" instead of "M" on them. For some reason that always happens, whether or not they're the new cherry variety.

But they shouldn't be "Wild Cherry" -- they should be "Mild Cherry."

Aside from their dark red wrapper, Wild Cherry M&M's are different from their original brethren in several ways. They're larger, they only come in two colors -- red and maroon -- and they smell like cherry candy.

Occasionally they also taste like cherry candy, too. But most of the time they just taste like bigger M&M's stuffed with creamier chocolate. There is no actual cherry at the center of Wild Cherry M&M's, and for the most part there's no actually cherry flavor, either.

Yet in every bag, a few M&M's do taste like cherries. Here's what it's like to eat them:

You tear open the packet and a strong, obviously fake cherry scent fills the room. Then you start eating, and five pieces in you don't taste any cherry. You just smell it. Suddenly you pop one piece into your mouth and it almost tastes like you bit into a chocolate-covered cherry. And then the next six or seven M&M's won't have any of the flavor.

I got several packs to confirm the phenomenon. Either the batch of M&M's in the vending machine was defective, my tongue is damaged, or these M&M's are only intermittently cherryish.

Perhaps the fact that there are only two or three highly cherry M&M's in the pack is what makes them wild. Or maybe my tongue really is broken. Neither would surprise me, but it isn't a bad eating experience. The mild candies have a very tasty, creamier chocolate than regular M&M's.

But they're still a bit more mild than wild. And no matter how good something is, if it's misnamed, it can't get a great score. Three sporks out of five.

Special spuds

It's the end of a holiday weekend, so let's make this quick. Everyone's been out stuffing themselves with hot dogs, hamburgers and apple pie for the last three days and can't think about food for too long.

My favorite French fry vendor was touting their taters Saturday at the Carlisle Summerfair craft show in my hometown. Bricker's Famous French Fries sells the best sticks of fried potatoes I've had in any of my moderate travels.

If you don't happen to live in Pennsylvania, fear not. You can usually get a similarly good fry from other food vendors at fairs. Here's what you should look for: A light golden color, a little bit of skin on each end and piping hot innards.

I don't know whether they use fresh potatoes or a special oil, but something about the booths that peddle their fries at festivals gives them the capability to make one amazing snack food. We'll leave the ratings on vacation -- just buy some fresh french fries whenever you're at a fair. You'll be glad you did.