Carefree Gourmet

A Clean Kitchen Counter

Pam and I interviewed public health inspector, William Kimura from the City of Pasadena on Carefree Food Bytes last Friday.  I was expecting some pretty grim stories of creepy crawlies in the kitchen… but Mr. Kimura was much too polite!  I lost an acrylic fingernail in a vat of pasta salad while working for a catering company in college.  You should have seen my friend and I searching through spiral pasta, olives and tomatoes looking for that bright red fingernail!  (When you work in food service, you wash your hand constantly!  Not good for fake nails!  After that incident, I had them removed deciding it was better to have battered fingernails than have someone choke on a fake one!)

We have all heard the stories about restaurant atrocities, seen the U tube videos of employees messing with our food.  But did you know that our homes are also a place where we can become sick?  I learned a couple of really important facts from Mr. Kimura.

1. Anti bacterial soap has to be on your hands fro 20 minutes to work!  Forget that!  Simple use soap and hot water (as hot as you can stand).  Now that is a way to save money!
2. Sponges should be sanitized every 2 days by either running through the dish washer or soaking in a bleach mixture.
3. You can sanitize your counter tops/sink by using 1 cup of bleach to 1 gallon of hot water and only after cleaning your counter, spray with the mixture and let sit for 15 minutes.
4. Cutting boards should be hardwood without lacquer and bamboo is ok to.  Both are better than the plastic boards.  Sounds like the best thing to do is to have a separate cutting board for meats and sanitize it with bleach/water mixture after each use.  Not sure how well the wood will hold up, but at least you won’t be transferring bacteria to your fresh produce or breads.
5. Don’t use your plastic water bottle more than twice if you aren’t keeping it really cold when full of liquid and sanitizing it after each use.

Off to sanitize my kitchen counter!