All the cookie dough you can eat and none of the Salmonella? Hell to the yes.

Any type of cookie dough is a good type of cookie dough in my book. Cookie dough ice cream, homemade cookie dough, even store-bought Nestle cookie dough is delicious. Especially when eaten directly from the plastic tube with your fingers while watching old episodes of Sex and the City.

You know what’s not good in my book (or stomach), though? Salmonella. Which is exactly what I’ll get if I keep on keepin’ on with my cookie dough habits. Sometimes – like when I’m chowing down on some dough to prevent a mid-finals meltdown – I try not to care about the havoc those raw eggs are wreaking on my body, but it’s there. And it’s wreaking. So you can imagine my excitement when I found this faux cookie dough recipe in Glamour magazine; it’s a lot healthier for your bod than the real stuff (there’s even wheat germ!) and even has an added peanut butter flavor, which just makes it even more scrumptious (not to mention totally safe to eat).

Trust me: this stuff is as tasty as it is easy to make.
And it’s really easy. Deliciously easy.

Ingredients:
1 tbsp of peanut butter (or any other nut butter)
1 banana
1/3 cup of rolled oats (not instant oats)
A pinch of cinnamon
2 tbsp of wheat germ

Preparation:

1) Sprinkle the wheat germ on a small plate.

2) In a bowl, mash the banana with a fork and stir in the peanut butter, oats, and cinnamon. Mix together until well-blended.

3) Pick up a spoonful and roll it into a ball with your hands, then roll the ball into the wheat germ until it is evenly coated.

4) Repeat until all the “batter” is all used up.

5) Enjoy your faux cookie dough balls!

6) Send a thank-you note to Glamour magazine.

This time it involves food. And not just any food, peanut butter.

Peanut butter has been the one constant in my life over the past 4 years. When boys upset me, I turned to peanut butter on a spoon. When friends upset me, I turned to peanut butter mixed with vanilla ice cream. When my jeans got too tight from all that PB on a spoon/in ice cream, I turned to peanut butter Power Bars to fuel my workouts. And when I got sick of working out and instead wanted to numb the pain, I smoked some pot and then turned to PB and Cheese crackers.

Peanut butter was my friend when I was feeling lonely, and my support base when I needed it most.

And now those f**kers in Blakely, Georgia have gone and ruined it for me. According to news reports, the people of Blakely are behind this whole peanut butter emergency; their factory was full of bacteria (not to mention roaches) and they knew their products were testing positive for Salmonella…but shipped them out anyway.

And now the country is freaking out and everyone is pulling my precious peanut butter products from store shelves. Even organic products! No one knows how widespread this outbreak is or when it will be resolved, so we all just have to sit tight as more and more products get added to the list.

So, thanks, people of Blakely, Georgia. Thanks a lot! My only saving grace in this moment of emotional stress is the knowledge that my precious Girl Scout Tagalongs were not affected.

Saturday night: You’re at a frat party. You just won three consecutive games of beer pong. You don’t think twice about drinking your cups, despite the fact that you’ve seen the ball land in other peoples’ used cups, roll along the basement floor, and watched the ball pass between thirty-something unwashed hands.

What gives?!?

Obviously, beer pong isn’t the most sanitary party game out there. But you have the “water cup,” right? That cup of tepid, dirty water is totes gonna disinfect that old, recycled ping pong ball (that was most likely found under someone’s bed 10 minutes before party time). Or not.

Some microbiology students at George Washington University decided to test exactly how detrimental to your health beer pong can be. If you like beer pong, you may want to skip this article.

After a somewhat mild night of beer pong, consisting of eight students and thirty beers, the budding scientists collected samples from each of the beer pong cups and the water cup. What’d they find? A haven for germs. Bacteria from the E. Coli, salmonella, and pneumonia families were present in every single test tube containing samples from the game. Oh, and that water cup that everyone used to clean the balls? That was the most infected, and housed the most bacteria growth over night.

This study centered on beer pong only, but what about other potentially sickening games? When’s the last time you did a kegstand, putting your mouth on the tap that’s been who-knows-where after a dozen other people slurped down a few seconds worth of brew? How about the time you stood in for flip cup, and rotated through other peoples’ cups round after round?

We put our mouths everywhere when there’s cheap beer involved (and some of us really put our mouths everywhere), but we’re super cautious about where we place our ASS when we’re in a public place? Just some food for thought.

Not that you have to quit beer pong — hell, no! To be just a tad cleaner, change out the water cups and beer pong balls throughout the night, and keep your own beer cup to drink out of after the ball hits (just dump the shot’s worth of beer into your own cup).

Alcohol is bad enough for your immune system; don’t give germs a better opportunity to take up residence in your body.

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[photo of R. Everett from abc.net]