Mustard Kills!

The tub of frosting is gone. I finished it last night standing in my kitchen in my pajamas. It was glorious. But now it’s gone.

In other news I’ve been working on some writing work for my friend Monika’s company. She asked me to write some product blurbs for her new line of MUSTARD products. It sounds gross at first, I know, but when I started my research (I went to Chapters and copied things information out of food encyclopedias) I discovered that mustard has some serious medicinal properties. Like it can be used to cure snakebites and can be put in your socks to prevent frostbite. Mustard seeds can I mean, not mustard you put on a hot dog. Although I’m sure that’d work too? Anyway, in my research gathering about mustard I also came across hundreds of negative things, all associated with mustard gas (I won’t post any of those pictures), a highly corrosive gas popular in WWI. HOWEVER, did you know that mustard gas contributed to the birth of chemotherapy?

During a military operation in World War II, a group of people were accidentally exposed to mustard gas and were later found to have very low white blood cell counts. It was reasoned that an agent that damaged the rapidly growing white blood cells might have a similar effect on cancer. Therefore, in the 1940s, several patients with advanced lymphomas (cancers of certain white blood cells) were given the drug by vein, rather than by breathing the irritating gas. Their improvement, although temporary, was remarkable. That experience led researchers to look for other substances that might have similar effects against cancer. (Wikipedia – “Chemotherapy”)

I ask you, who knew mustard was so important?

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