Well-liked Spice Guilty of Fragrant Assault

Breaking news: I just met up with my friend Hayley, who told me a harrowing food tale. Given my privileged position of reaching such a vast audience of eaters, I feel it is my responsibility to publish her case report here. Feel free to start formally recording my acts of public service starting…now!

“Tuesday morning, before work,” began Hayley’s frightful account, “I was sitting in bed, checking my email, eating soup.” (Pretentious Food Blog reading comprehension exercise: please draw a picture including the following labels: a) girl b) bed c) email d) breakfast soup.) “I was in a rush, and sort of inhaling the soup, like this.” Here, mouth agape, she mimed to me an act of hasty shoveling. “My eyes were on the computer when, all of a sudden,” she gasped, both hands rising to her neck, “I sucked a bay leaf right into my throat!!”

“No way!” I shrieked. “A whole bay leaf?” She nodded, her eyes wide, I suspect with the memory of near-strangulation by aromatic leaf. “Yes, an entire bay leaf. And it stayed there, stuck, right in my windpipe. I was choking. I was actually choking. For several seconds I thought I would die. But the bay leaf was sort of fluttering in there, like with the vibrations in my throat. Finally I managed to move the leaf, and hold it in a way that let me breathe out of one nostril.” She demonstrated to me her emergency technique of positioning her neck, as though purposely trying to give herself a double-chin.

Interruption: have I mentioned yet that my friend Hayley is a highly attractive female? Let me print this fact at once, before I go on with this story, which she’s allowed me to relay to you uniquely for your own safety. For the record, Hayley does not actually have anything resembling a double-chin and it is a blessed miracle she mustered enough of one to save her own life.

Readers, this is the part of the story where you learn that, beyond being so incredibly sexy and fit, Hayley is an extraordinary character. “Since I could partially breathe,” she went on to tell, “I walked myself to the hospital.”

PFB Hero Alert!! Can you believe it? As my own accepted modes of transportation to hospital include only ambulance, fire-truck, helicopter, and potentially the human back, I am preparing to whittle a medal of bravery out of my finest baking chocolate. Yet Hayley is modest.

“When I got to the emergency room, I started to panic," she confessed. "The line-up was really long and the bay leaf was slicing my throat. Every once in a while it would move again and I wouldn’t be able to breathe. They stuck me ahead of everyone in an observation room while I waited for surgery to have it removed. The ordeal went on for six hours, with me every so often having fits of choking. The doctors let that go on, by the way, just to see if I would randomly dislodge it. But in the end it took two scopes and an extraction under sedation.”

Today’s tip for blog followers: when making soup, for heaven’s sake tie your bay leaves into a bouquet garni and remove the entire thing before serving. And before sitting up in bed and furiously inhaling a quirky breakfast, Hayley and I both suggest you brush your hair and put on a bra. You may just end up at the Surrey Memorial ER, where folks will look up to you for it.