SO GROSS!!! (long) - Page 3

Speaking about hairnets. I particulary HATE hairs on anything but my head. My grandma and my mom ALWAYS made us wear a hairnet when we wanted to help them cook or pick up all our hair and put a lot of hair spray so not even one tiny hair might move. My grandma didn't like to eat at restaurants because she didn't see how they cooked. To the point: I see shows on tv where they decorate cakes or cook food and my husband and I always coment on that, they don't wear hair nets, not even a pony tail. I know some of the cakes or food on tv. is not eaten , but some is. What is the deal here? Are they not supposed to wear hair nets too? I am a band booster on my son's high school and we well at the concession stand on football nights and I'm in charge of one conc. stand, and I always MAKE sure everybody on my cons. stand wears gloves and hairnets, and the ones that take orders and handle the money don't handle the food and viceversa. OUr health dept. is very strict on that. One time I sold some nachos to a lady and when she left my friend asked me if I knew who she was, I said :no, he said: is one of the Health. Dept. Inspectors, she took the nachos, paid went around the stand and checked the temperature of the cheese with a thermometer! I was the one in charge of the cheese at the time, thanks God it was right. Now I know her personally and we are friends. You have to be ready ALWAYS

they probably didn't want to wash the berries because they are more prone to mold, especially raspberries. i've heard of pastry chefs following the same procedures, but not picking berries off the floor! also, a great way to remove much of the pesticides from the fruits surface is to used a solution of apple cider vinager and hydrogen peroxide, in sperate bottles, don't mix them. (pesticides soak into the fruit too, no way to avoid that unless you go organic). you spray fruit/veg then rinse with water for a miute or two. this was shown to be just as effective as bleach, but of course, much less toxic. i believe the study was done at Harvard University?? i also used this solution to clean my house : )

I forgot that one, I also have seen hot chefs cooking and then they stick one finger in the pot lick it and then just wipe it on their apron and continue cooking and sometimes do it again. And on TV, and no hairnets either, and people eat that food.

Yep, that's the way some are. Then again some are really clean. When you become a Pastry Chef it will depend on who your working for. I'm assuming you just graduated? You'll see it all depends on who your going to be working for, that's what it comes down to. If the margins are so close that the only place you can make $$$ is from labor that will explain it. I'm also guessing nobody from school went to actually check them out recently. It sounded to me they are looking for free help instead of actually trying to train you to what the real world is like.

Mike

The cooking shows on tv have to present the hosts as attractive. Honestly, think of Giada. The cleaver wielding Queen of cleavage. She wouldn't look very pretty with her hair stuffed up under an ugly flattening hairnet, would she? Or even good old Sandra Lee...her show would take on a "sanitized and stuffy" look with her donning gloves and smushing up her poof under a cap.

You don't actually want to wash your berries, even if you try very hard to dry them carefully. You just brush off any visible dirt. The water will cause the berry to sweat eventually, especially raspberries will break down. There was a thread on here a while ago about washing strawberries before dipping in chocolate. Berries don't stay fresh as long if they've been washed.

My brother-in-law, who teaches at NECI in Vt, bought 50 long stemmed strawberries, $1 each for his wedding. His sisters, trying to be helpful, rinsed them. By the next day, they were oozing out of the chocolate they had been dipped in.

Picking food up off the floor is gross, however.

I was Director of Catering at a college that had a program with Special Ed. students. They would come and fill ramekins full of mayo, etc. Well the chef wanted to broaden their horizons (and possibly cut his labor costs by using their free labor) and had them making egg salad. They were using their hand w/ food handling gloves to get down in the bowl and mix the egg salad. I just happened to look out the window of my office to where they were mixing, and they were licking their gloves and putting them back into the egg salad. I haven't eaten egg salad ever since.

But I mean the fruit came from off the ground in the first place kwim.

I do generally rinse off my fruit but I do it last minute too.

If one was truly germa phobic with the food they prepare they would never speak while around the food. We all expectorate our dna.

I mean I think we have to find a happy medium where you are comfortable.

The government allows so much bad stuff in our food including some very gross items like rodent 'drops' and rodent hair and etc. Miniscule amounts but nothing is pure.

That may be true, but I would personally never NOT wash off a strawberry, lettuce, or anything else that was picked by human hands. How do I say this delicately. Ummmm, ok. I live in lettuce/broccolli/melon capital of the US, one of them anyhow. Field workers galore. Drug abuse, alcoholism, unsanitary conditions are all rampant out in the fields. Heroin addicts doing their thing out in the middle of the field. I don't think all of them come back to the bus to use the facilities either. I'm not exaggerating, I knew a nice lady who was a migrant farm worker for years who finally kicked a heroin addiction, and she says the field workers are notorious for it.

Ew. You definitely need to find a new bakery!

true, true, true, and true.... but anything more than aesthetically unpleasant will NOT be removed by washing. The real stuff is already seeped in and would need to be cooked out (if possible)

They call me Mrs. Lysol at home and work. My employees think I have 3 sets of eyes and let me tell you even that is not enough! People have this vague, inexplicable thought that their hair, coughs, germs, spit yada yada yada carry no germs, no dirt and are perfectly suitable for other human consumption...not joking but seriously that IS true. I have lost count the # of times I have corrected employees, customers, children, co-shoppers on basic etiqette....to little or no avail.
My pet peeve is coughing at someone on their face or in their food- uh helllooo? knock knock!! What to speak of filthy restaurants I went to a well established cake decoration school in Toronto and the OWNER was teaching a class in chocolate making and truffles...the man irritatingly kept his dirty 70 year old binder on top of the marble slab, upon which he calmly proceeded to pour the tempered chocolate...he licked his fingers as did several others...needless to say when everyone was stuffing their bags to take home the goodies, yours truly gladly let others dive into my share! I mean for crying out loud-you are an institution meant to teach food hygenie to others!
As for washing berries etc...seen food tv lately? Practically all hosts will pop open a berry package and dump them straight in...
I try and avoid eating out too other than my day off when it is sad to have to cook and you enjoy the night out...but I am very careful where I go and most often it is the same few places we will frequent again and again. The worst are the young kids at food courts...try telling them handling cash and pizza together is a no no...I could go on and on and on...lol...

We have a friend that works for a large insurance company settling food poisoning claims. No one in his family eats out at restaurants because of what he has seen. Kind of scary! Also, I was told by someone to always wash your lettuce, etc because some field workers bring their dogs with them to work in the fields.

My thought exactly!!!



As we put it, "This is the stuff you CAN see ... can you imagine the stuff you CAN'T see?"

BUT ..... I know when I'm in the middle of making Thanksgiving dinner, my home kitchen is a disaster. Forty-'leven projects going at the same time .... Hey! who the heck stole my wipe-down towel again!!? There is a consideration of the difference between what a kitchen looks like after hours and what it looks like at the peak of production.

That said, I DO acknowledge a difference between "working" clutter and filth that's been there awhile.

Well, I'm THANKFUL that I can work in a Health Dept. Inspected Kitchen that has NEVER had less than a 98% on an inspection. In fact, the Health Dept. has their functions at our facility and pays our church to cater them. Makes me feel proud.

Also makes me feel tired....I just came from preparing some food there and it's a production just to clean up in there or you get "The Evil Eye" from the Maintenance Guy! LOL But, he keeps us straight.

Today our Student Pastor was late coming in to a restaurant in which we were eating. He had been to another restaurant. They were taken to a table that needed to be wiped clean. The waitress went into the kitchen, came out with a wet cloth, dropped the cloth on the floor, picked it up and proceeded to clean their table with it! They turned around and walked out! EEEEWWWW! What was she thinking?

RE: Berries. I read somewhere (maybe on CC) that to clean strawberries and raspberries the preferred way is to take a damp paper towel and individually wipe them. That way there is no "ooze" from too much water yet the berry is wiped clean.

What? No "3 second rule" as industry standard? Are you SURE? LOL Glad you got reassigned. People never cease to amaze me!

Beth in KY