crab sandwich

Last Sunday I got food poisoning. All-night-into-the-next-day-sleep-next-to-the-toilet-how-am-I-still-throwing-up food poisoning. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that I got it from one or both of two things:

A) The last chicken tikka pasty bought from a Victoria Station vendor at 11pm

or

B) The first bite out of a chicken finger that revealed a still-frozen center

Now for those of you who think a “pasty” is either a term that describes the residents of England (or Vermont) or a gravity-defying sticker type thing that covers the nipples of exotic dancers in Utah, let me enlighten you:

A pasty is like a British Hot Pocket with various combinations of delicious fillings–it’s like a hand-held chicken/beef/veggie pot pie.

Usually they’re delicious.

As for the chicken finger … I had met a friend of a friend at a pub, and after a few pints we ordered “Chicken Goujons” (we had to look up ‘goujon’ on the internets to figure out what it meant).

When the order came, I took a chicken tender, dipped deeply into some sort of dill sauce, and took a bite. As I began to chew, my face soured while my brain went back and forth between “STOP CHEWING! That shit feels freezing!” and “Don’t worry about it. It’s probably just the sauce.” After swallowing the small bite, I felt the remainder of the morsel with my finger. Ice cold.

Arguments For The Pasty

• Last pasty left of the variety I chose
• 11pm at Victoria Station
• Slight greyish hue

Arguments For The Frozen Chicken Finger

• Frozen meat (albeit frozen cooked meat)
• Eaten at a mostly deserted pub on a Sunday evening
• Salmonella

I am 100% recovered, but thinking about either or (gulp) both at the same time makes my stomach churn and grumble like a 1950s furnace on the fritz.

Oh the irony of getting food poisoning before arriving in Africa.