After two years back at this job (I took five years off to run Curves and was in the newspaper business for 27 (yikes) years before that), I am going to tackle entertaining you by writing a column. Our reporter, Jennifer, has taken two weeks holidays to visit with her sister overseas, so I volunteered to fill in for her so that she didn't have to pre-write two weeks of material. If you don't know, when a reporter takes a break, they have to pre-do a lot of their work so they can enjoy their time off and not think of their job. I thought I would try to ease her burden, and a writer I am not...so here it goes!
I recently took a food handling course and was amazed at the carelessness of some people in the food industry. First off, I would like to thank Ken Cross and Kristin Waroma for amply fulfilling the task of teaching us "normal" people who think they know everything about the public's safety when it comes to food. Two words...we don't.
Long gone are the days when you drop something on the floor and applied the five second rule to pick it up and consume anyway. They say you shouldn't even do this at home. Go figure. I remember when we used to drop food on the floor at home or at school and regularly pick it up and continue on with whatever we were doing at the time. Apparently this is unacceptable. I grew up in a family of 11, so there was no wasted food...EVER! Also there was no such thing as hand sanitizer. My mother wouldn't let us near the table with dirty hands, so as far as she knew, we always had clean ones (sorry Mom). Of course that was after coming in from outside playing kick the can....you know, exercise. Not coming up from the basement or your bedroom from playing video games and pulling up a chair. Oops, sorry, that's another column. Don't get me going.
Anyway, during the course we viewed a report from ABC's Primetime Live with Diane Sawyer on what goes on "behind the scenes" in restaurant kitchens. I had actually seen the original taping of this and as a consumer was horrified. But until you see this used as a teaching tool, it really doesn't sink in. Some of these are big chain restaurants and serve hundreds of thousands of customers every year. You just figure you get "decent" fast food, ingest it and then don't think about it again, unless of course you're one of the unlucky ones. They go home and get the tummy rumblings followed by diarrhea and vomiting. That's usually associated with the term food poisoning and according to our wise instructors, thousands of cases go unreported. When they are severe enough, they are reported and that's when Ken and Kristin step in. They have the unenviable task of tracing where and when the incident occurred and how the patient ended up like this. I definitely had my eyes opened on the amount of work and different incidents that the Health Inspectors are responsible for (especially with all the water this spring) and sometimes the end result isn't food poisoning at all. They are actually little CSI reporters having to dissect the chain of events leading up to the mishap. Thank you for protecting us, the public. I could go on forever about this subject (as I barely hit the basics) but I'm only allowed so much space. By the way, you can view that video online.
Well that's week one. If you have any comments or would like to vent about something, zip me an email. I'd love to hear from you. I've decided to end my column with a pet-peeve of the week; student drivers "learning" to drive with their hoods up on their bunny hugs (yes I know, that ages me). When they turn side to side, all they see is the inside of their hood. I don't get it and don't feel safe at all with this type of beginner behind the wheel! But maybe that's just me...let me know what you think!
