am i the only person who likes cold soup straight from the can?

I feel like there could be a million other reasons for the "carbonation". Sounds pretty weird though.

Yeah I saved the soup. No point testing it unless I get sick, which I don't expect. The screening diagnostic test we used for the lady in ICU was serum inoculation of mice, which die if the toxin's present.

I let the deli know what I found. I've had that same soup dozens of times before without incident, though I don't usually take the first spoonful cold. That'll teach me to play Letterpress while making lunch.

I'm not a food chemist, but I'm sure there could have been CO2 released from non-bacterial elements in the soup. Gas produced by anaerobic bacteria would stink, and this didn't.

okay don't blame your impending botulism on your need to embarrass me at word games

Just trying to level the playing field.

ice cold

I approve

Is "for funsies" supposed to be as condescending as it comes across?

You have my permission to shoot me in one of my fleshier parts. Or possibly you will accept my apology instead.

No worries. Sounds like you know something about microbiology? I've heard "bulging cans" as a sign of C.botulinum but no idea if that translates to a puffed out plastic bag of carbonated cream of mushroom.

It takes a 15 minutes of boiling to denature botulism toxin! That's longer than I thought it would take. So just quickly nuking can still be a problem.

Yeah, bacterial toxins are super hardy.

We did rounds on botulism after that recent case, found out about the deaths from carrot juice borne botulism in 2006 (http://www.cdc.gov/MMWR/preview/mmwrhtml/mm55d106a1.htm). This was Bolthouse carrot juice, the same thing my wife drinks (I prefer their Passion Orange Guava). Got home that night, found a huge bottle of Bolthouse carrot juice in the downstairs fridge, 2 weeks past expiry date (2 for 1 deal the last time we bought it). Botulism has nothing to do with best before dates but I dumped it anyway.

I have a prior history of food borne illness. Got the worst ever case of food poisoning from Yuki-jirushi (Snow Brand) low fat milk in 2000 when I lived in Kyoto. Turned out they had Staph Aureus in the milk plant, weren't cleaning the pipes properly (I used to work in an ice cream store, I know how hard it is to clean mild contamination off machinery). They were also taking expired milk and dumping it back into the pasteurizer. I got horribly horribly sick in the middle of judging an English speech contest in a suburban high school in Osaka. It was a huge scandal in Japan, the dairy originally tried to cover up what happened, recalled milk products only a few days later. Months later I had 2 Snow Brand guys show up at my apartment door unexpectedly, both wearing dark suits in the hot summer weather, bowing and apologizing profusely, and presenting me with a box of absolutely marvelous chocolate biscuits.

Mr. Jaq got staph poisoning from ice cream in the Bellagio a few years ago. I've never seen a sicker person, and it came on incredibly fast. Horrible stuff.