A woman gave herself food poisoning, twice, after making a simple error when cooking stew.
Anne Sullivan decided that for lunch and dinner she would make herself a vegan stew with her slow cooker.
Choosing a white bean stew recipe, Anne made sure to follow the instructions exactly as they were stated.
This included pre-soaking the beans, then letting them simmer all day in the slow cooker.
Yet seven hours later, the beans had not grown in size, reports Reader's Digest.
But after spending so long on the recipe, Anne tucked into her pre-made lunch at work, even though the beans were tough and chewy.
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The Mirror Online reports that she began to feel faint and dizzy , saying: "I must have looked awful, too, because my boss told me to go home and get some sleep. I felt like throwing up."
Over the course of the day, Anne started feeling better and by the next day she was serving up the stew again, this time for both her and her boyfriend.
Halfway through their meal her boyfriend wondered if it was the beans which had made Anne sick. They abandoned their meal and were heading out when the symptoms struck again.
Even though she'd pre-soaked the beans and let them stew for hours, they were still undercooked.
This meant a naturally occurring toxin called phytohaemagglutinin was even more potent than normal, and was causing symptoms like diarrhoea, dizziness and nausea.
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Anne's mistake was not boiling the beans for ten minutes.
What she should have done was soak the beans for five hours, drained, rinsed then boiled them for ten minutes.
By whacking them in the slow cooker straight away she actually increased the toxin levels.
"I had no idea - I think most people assume beans will cook in a slow cooker. Most recipes seem to assume you're using canned beans, which are fully cooked."
