Does your kitchen make the grade?

I got "below C". Here's what I do wrong:

1. I don't clip my nails before I start cooking. (Who the hell does?)

2. The odd fly gets into the house.

3. My kitchen ceiling needs to be painted. (We're only partly finished
renovating.)

4. I thaw stuff on the counter occasionally. Been doing that all my
life.

5. I put hot leftovers in rubbermaid containers then directly in the
fridge, instead of cooling stuff down first.

I think the main reason I got such a bad grade was because I answered
truthfully that I had mice in my house. (They live in the ceiling over
the family room.) But I've never seen mice droppings anywhere,
especially not the kitchen.

Hell, I live in a 110-year-old farmhouse. *Everyone* around here has
mice.

Jo Anne

I got a 100. (Really)

Alot of the stuff about keeping it clean and cold is a necessity in
Arizona. Milk left out for 30 minutes at a room temp of 85 to 90 degrees
makes it go bad FAST. I usually pour half a glass and put the container
right back in the fridge. (No I don't drink it from the carton.) I like
my steaks medium-well to well done. Same for chicken, turkey,pork and
hamburger. I don't care for raw eggs but love well done French toast or
eggs scrambled dry. (With just a little brown on them.)

My brother left the milk out overnight when we were kids and actually
got up early to put it back in the fridge before I ate my cereal for
breakfast. After mentioning that I was puking my guts up just an hour
after breakfast he mentioned his deed.

I try to buy stuff in small quantities, keep it cold and use it up or I
throw it out. (Especially milk.) I also wash my hands quite a bit as I
work as a WAN administrator and touch all those keyboards all day long.
I'll be danged if I'm going to eat with hands that have "gone" where all
those hundreds of hands have gone all day.

Just lucky I like stuff well cooked or ice cold I guess. I do wonder if
the American fascination with refrigerating everything is a bit of
overkill. Surfing the web you see the outside markets in Europe, Asia
and the other places around the globe with every type of meat hanging in
mesh baskets at room temperature.

Bart D. Hull

Tempe, Arizona

Check http://www.inficad.com/~bdhull/engine.html
for my Subaru Engine Conversion
Check http://www.inficad.com/~bdhull/fuselage.html
for Tango II I'm building.

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Jo Anne Slaven wrote:
Does your kitchen make the grade?

I got "below C". Here's what I do wrong:

1. I don't clip my nails before I start cooking. (Who the hell does?)

2. The odd fly gets into the house.

3. My kitchen ceiling needs to be painted. (We're only partly finished
renovating.)

4. I thaw stuff on the counter occasionally. Been doing that all my
life.

5. I put hot leftovers in rubbermaid containers then directly in the
fridge, instead of cooling stuff down first.

I think the main reason I got such a bad grade was because I answered
truthfully that I had mice in my house. (They live in the ceiling over
the family room.) But I've never seen mice droppings anywhere,
especially not the kitchen.

Hell, I live in a 110-year-old farmhouse. *Everyone* around here has
mice.

Jo Anne

Bart D. Hull wrote:


Just lucky I like stuff well cooked or ice cold I guess.

I like my food well cooked (most people consider it overcooked), and I
like cold things really cold too. I rarely get sick. In 17 years at my
job, I have only missed 5 or 6 days for actually being sick. I've
missed some days for bad asthma attacks, and I missed 2 weeks for
injuring my back last year. But actually catching something is rare.

I can only think of two cases where I had food poisoning. One was a
piece of fish that was cooked the same day I bought it. The label said
it was packed that day. I did think it might have a smell to it, but I
thought I was being paranoid as the smell was so faint. I was puking
the next day. The other time was a hamburger at a fast food place. I
was photographing the horse show at the fairgrounds, so we didn't get a
chance to get dinner til after 9pm. We hit a drive-thru on the way to
the hotel. They were out of baked potatoes, so I ordered two small
bacon cheeseurgers. I was so hungry I ate one in the car. When we got
to the hotel, I took a bite of the second one and saw the red center. I
chucked it, but odds are the two burgers were cooked the same. I
started getting sick the next day, and I spent most of the next night
in the hotel bathroom.

My parents like their meats rare, and my mother has no problem eating
anything that has been left out for ages. Remember that prime rib I
left out overnight?. She wanted me to give it to her, so that she could
cook it up. (I didn't.) She gets sick a lot. Even with a flu shot, she
gets sick at least 3 times a winter, for at least a week at a time.

I do wonder if
the American fascination with refrigerating everything is a bit of
overkill. Surfing the web you see the outside markets in Europe, Asia
and the other places around the globe with every type of meat hanging in
mesh baskets at room temperature.


Actually, most of the really bad diseases come from places like China,
where dead animals are crammed into markets like that. Ever see some of
those markets? I saw a video last year that was horrible. Live animals
in cages so packed that they could not move, dead animals in there with
them, all covered in feces. Those markets are a breeding ground for
diseases. And they were being sold for food. This is where we get
diseases like bird flu and SARS.

After seeing that, I would never want to travel there. And it makes
sense now why some of my chinese co-workers have so many stomach
problems. No wonder I had to report them so many times for health code
violations. Even their violations are probably nothing compared to what
they are used to doing. They just can't understand why our rules are so
strict.