Playing it safe
I just did a food safety course. Learning how not to kill people with food.
I have of course cooked before, have fed other people before and by some luck, have not managed to kill anyone, but as you know, there is only so far you can trust luck.
So, now I am armed with knowledge about what is safe. Apparently when you drop a $10,000 truffle on the floor, you then have to throw it out - ouch!
You don't want to be keeping food out for more than 4 hours, otherwise you will have dead guests. And if that fridge temperature creeps over 5 degrees - then it is all start again. Just like in that Monty Python scene where Death sort of interrupted the Dinner party. (if you don't know it, I suggest you look it up on youtube)
Learning all these rules - which I did sort of know about, it does surprise me that I am still alive.
Of course, maybe a strong stomach has kept me alive, a bit like the iocane powder that Wesley took in the "Princess Bride" so that he could enter battles of the wit with enemies who were not aware that he had planned ahead by building up resistance. Apparently iocane powder comes from Australia, and I am no doubt growing it in my backyard somewhere?
Of course, not everyone is like me, having built up a resistance to iocane powder, and old people, sick people and unborn children are very susceptible to a little 'iocane' powder. So much so, that nursing homes have apparently brought in some interesting new procedures I thought you might like to be aware of just in case you thought it was OK to bring some home-baked cookies to granny.
It is not the big bad wolf one needs to be aware of these days - with his creepy cross-dressing, geriatric-eating habits - but Little Red Riding-Hood with her unbleached kitchen, and salmonella tainted preservative free goodies.
Don't be fooled by those innocent blond ringlets, Red Riding-Hood could see your grandparents in the grave before you had time to say, "What Big Inheritance You Have".
For this reason, any innocent looking Red Riding-Hoods trying to visit a nursing home with a cache of goodies will have to prove that the only food they brought in through the front door is commercially wrapped with receipts proving that it has come from a sanitised, safe, sterile big factory as opposed to the filth ridden rat-infested orgy of germs that one may call a home kitchen.
These rules are of course for the good of your loved elderly ones, who just might be fooled into thinking that home-cooked treats are a symbol of your love, and represent a simple honest offering as such. It is pointless to argue otherwise - there is no such thing as "love" as a cake ingredient, and if there was, we could so easily replicate it, synthesize it, patent it, refine it, and make it ten times better in a factory than you could in your crude little hell-hole.
So here is to a long sterile life - thank you Food Safety!
I have of course cooked before, have fed other people before and by some luck, have not managed to kill anyone, but as you know, there is only so far you can trust luck.
So, now I am armed with knowledge about what is safe. Apparently when you drop a $10,000 truffle on the floor, you then have to throw it out - ouch!
You don't want to be keeping food out for more than 4 hours, otherwise you will have dead guests. And if that fridge temperature creeps over 5 degrees - then it is all start again. Just like in that Monty Python scene where Death sort of interrupted the Dinner party. (if you don't know it, I suggest you look it up on youtube)
Learning all these rules - which I did sort of know about, it does surprise me that I am still alive.
Of course, maybe a strong stomach has kept me alive, a bit like the iocane powder that Wesley took in the "Princess Bride" so that he could enter battles of the wit with enemies who were not aware that he had planned ahead by building up resistance. Apparently iocane powder comes from Australia, and I am no doubt growing it in my backyard somewhere?
Of course, not everyone is like me, having built up a resistance to iocane powder, and old people, sick people and unborn children are very susceptible to a little 'iocane' powder. So much so, that nursing homes have apparently brought in some interesting new procedures I thought you might like to be aware of just in case you thought it was OK to bring some home-baked cookies to granny.
It is not the big bad wolf one needs to be aware of these days - with his creepy cross-dressing, geriatric-eating habits - but Little Red Riding-Hood with her unbleached kitchen, and salmonella tainted preservative free goodies.
Don't be fooled by those innocent blond ringlets, Red Riding-Hood could see your grandparents in the grave before you had time to say, "What Big Inheritance You Have".
For this reason, any innocent looking Red Riding-Hoods trying to visit a nursing home with a cache of goodies will have to prove that the only food they brought in through the front door is commercially wrapped with receipts proving that it has come from a sanitised, safe, sterile big factory as opposed to the filth ridden rat-infested orgy of germs that one may call a home kitchen.
These rules are of course for the good of your loved elderly ones, who just might be fooled into thinking that home-cooked treats are a symbol of your love, and represent a simple honest offering as such. It is pointless to argue otherwise - there is no such thing as "love" as a cake ingredient, and if there was, we could so easily replicate it, synthesize it, patent it, refine it, and make it ten times better in a factory than you could in your crude little hell-hole.
So here is to a long sterile life - thank you Food Safety!
