Writer's Block: Neurotic Behavior

[packbat]

What is the one thing you're most neurotic about? View other answers

Sanitary food preparation, actually.

Rationally, I'm on pretty safe ground: one, in a reasonably prosperous country with a good water supply like the United States, the requirements for sanitary food preparation are simple, and two, the risks associated with poor food preparation are significant enough that it seems foolish to ignore. Wash your hands before you eat, cook with clean utensils (and keep the utensils clean while cooking), use fresh ingredients ... from everything I've heard (I've not done any research), it's seem to me that these things make for a great reduction to the risk for illness.

Of course, if it was as simple as that, I wouldn't call it neurotic.

I get downright twitchy when some people cook. I mean, licking off cooking utensils while you cook? Are you trying to spread plagues? Oh, and people sharing drinks (sharing drinks!), serving food where a discarded part of it touched the floor but the main bulk was cooked, or, Ghu protect us, the five second rule ... it's killing me, I'm telling you! And you can't say anything, because they does it like it's just the reasonable thing to do!

I'm sorry, I gotta take some deep breaths, center myself. It's too much.

...

Ahhh, that's better. Yes, so that's my number-one neurosis. Clean food, please.

Comments

[kadyg.livejournal.com]

I spent my first 3 weeks of culinary school taking Safety and Sanitation (and am now ServSafe Certified, thank you very much). The big thing to keep in mind is that licking spoons and dropping foods isn't really too bad from a health perspective. (I'm not saying it's good, mind you.) But cool down a pot of rice wrong and you can actually create a salmonella factory.

After that class, I'm amazed more people aren't dead from food-borne something or other.

[packbat.livejournal.com]

...fascinating. What's the "wrong" way to cool rice that does this?

[majoru.livejournal.com]

I think I'll just post my little rant (not directed at you but very related) in a separate post to avoid polluting your blog with my ideas [laughs].

[packbat.livejournal.com]

I'll go read it there, then! :D

[roaminrob.livejournal.com]

I like the flavor of a morsel of food that has landed on a linoleum floor trodden by bare feet in the middle of Summer.

[packbat.livejournal.com]

That is ... very specific. *raises eyebrow*

Cody adds a scientific perspective

[(Anonymous)]

Anybody who's ever picked colonies from a petri dish to make a bacterial broth knows how wrong the five second rule is.

Re: Cody adds a scientific perspective

[packbat.livejournal.com]

Case closed!