On the first of the two long weekends, I made myself a nice dinner. After grilling chicken that had marinated all day, I took some of the leftover marinade and used it as a sauce over the cooked chicken. I really enjoyed the meal, then realized that the marinade I had used as a sauce was uncooked, of course, and had had raw chicken steeping in it all day.

Oh no, I thought. I quickly looked up Salmonella poisoning online and found that the symptoms lasted up to a week and were not the kind you wanted to experience on a hot date. And I just happened to have one on those planned in the near future.

I called Info Santé and asked them what to do. The nurse seemed alarmed when I told her what I’d done, and told me to call the poison center. The latter told me that the vinegar in the marinade should have killed most of the Salmonella, and that that was my best hope.

Vinegar kills Salmonella, does it? I decided not to leave things to chance and downed a glass of one part water, one part white vinegar. Just to be sure.

Disgusting. Daft. But the date went swimmingly.