“a highly readable guide for home cooks.”
– Valorie Lennox, Gulf Islands Driftwood, December 1996
Tis the season to make merry – not microbes!!
But cooks who aren’t careful can add a dose of microbes to their dining pleasures, which could put a damper on making merry.
Enter Salt Spring Island’s author, Sheri Nielson, an award wining instructor for British Columbia’s FOODSAFE Program, who has transformed her foodsafe savvy and journalistic skills into this highly readable guide for home cooks.
Entitled “Everybody’s Foodsafe Kitchen”, this step-by-step guide to the safe preparation of food could literally save lives. As noted by Barry Black in his introduction to the book, foodborne illness is frequently passed off as a nasty assault by the 24-hour flu. But for young children or the elderly, food poisoning can be a killer.
It can be scary stuff: realizing that stuffing a turkey, serving soft-boiled eggs or letting the children lick the cake batter is risky. But Nielson’s comprehensive guide reduces the risk, by explaining in plain English, how to make kitchens and cooking safer.
Her first rule of safe food: ‘if in doubt throw it out’. Her approach is not to scare but to simplify while educating people about the need to play safe in the kitchen.
She starts with the basics, an explanation of the microbes which can cause food poisoning. Fortunately only one percent of microbes are harmful to humans. Nielson identifies them by name, describes how they can move from surface to surface in a kitchen and why they are harmful to humans.
The importance of temperature is stressed. The ‘danger zone’ at which microbes can multiply most rapidly is 40 to 140 degrees F (4 to 60 degrees C). Nielson explains how to clean and cook to minimize and, in some instances, kill microbes before they can multiply and develop the toxins which make humans ill.
For a foodsafe kitchen she specifies five simple tools: a probe thermometer to ensure food is properly cooked inside, a spray bottle, a clean cloth, a one gallon bucket and household chlorine bleach.
From the basics, Nielson moves on to the specifics. Her book is organized into food types, so it can be either read straight through or used as a reference just before stuffing that Christmas turkey.
There is information on handling poultry, meats, fish and shellfish, soups, stews and casseroles, all presented in a simple, easy to assimilate format. Her advice ranges from how to buy products to how to safely store leftovers.
Dairy products, eggs, cereals and grains, legumes and nuts, fruits and vegetables are thoroughly examined and the potential hazards of improper handling described. For example, due to the risk of raw eggs being contaminated with salmonella, children should not be allowed to ‘lick the bowl’ when the uncooked batter contains raw eggs.
There’s advice on keeping bread safe from mold, on home canning to avoid the danger of botulism and on the purchasing of commercially canned or frozen foods.
Nothing seems to escape this encyclopedic survey of cooking cleanliness. Barbecues – a frequent source of food poisoning due to the more casual preparation – outdoor meals and picnics, elaborate dinner parties, camping and kitchen management are all covered in individual sections.
There’s advice on personal hygiene when preparing food – did you know the average person loses approximately 80 microbe-contaminated hairs a day? Tips on drinking water, kitchen equipment and appliances, kitchen design, cleanliness and pest control fill out the remainder of this comprehensive 220 page book.
A quick review of the final pages, which list the illnesses and symptoms of food poisoning, give reasons enough to put this book in every kitchen.
– Valorie Lennox, Gulf Islands Driftwood, December 1996