No, I am not able to cross post (X-post) the Cooking or The Kitchen Table from here.

Used to be able to before the recent improvements.

Emily, can you try to fix this?

Honestly, I don't worry too much about it. I also rinse before slicing but I don't scrub anything. I'm careful about where I place any raw meat, and what I touch before washing my hands, especially poultry and I clean up the area immediately after I'm done. I was obsessed with washing the exterior of every package during Covid but not any more. As far as I know we've never contracted a food borne illness at home. In fact I don't know that we've ever had a food borne illness.

Keep surfaces and hands clean, refrigerate appropriately. What you are terming "pristine" I would term minimum requirements for food. I do not wipe down package exteriors.

I wipe down cheese pkgs. I only scrub quickly rinds like cantelope crevices and the fruit will not be cooked.)

I wash my hands often, rinse fruits and vegetables, keep cold things cold, and refrigerate leftovers promptly. I avoid cross contamination by choping fruits snd vegtables first or using separate cutting boards and knives for produce and meats. I switch to a fresh wooden spoon once chicken and turkey are cooked through. I don't clean the outside of packaging.

Comments from Kitchen Table aren't showing up here so here is my C+P comment -

Regardless of where I've been I wash my hands as soon as I come home especially if I've been grocery shopping. If I've been putting away groceries I wash them after as well.

I put leftovers in the fridge right after dinner and only keep them a max of two days. I store things in glass dishes and never plastic.

I scrub my sinks constantly.

I have a separate cutting board for chicken and wash it and that sink immediately when finished.

I don't know if this is relevant but I air dry any dishes that I have hand-washed.

I don't do any of that, although I'm mindful of the potential of foodborne illness (worked in the Health Dept. for years). Most of the restaurant problems stemmed from food not being held at the proper temps.

I wash my hands before eating or prepping food.

I'm mindful of temps, not leaving food out that should be kept at a lower temp.

My kitchen is clean and tidy. I'm an obsessive counter wiper. Beyond that, I don't consider it pristine.

To have a thread show up in Cooking and HDC, start at Cooking. You can add HDC during the process of posting in Cooking. You cannot add Cooking during the process of posting in HDC.

I wash hands and produce. Only time I've had food-borne illness was about 30 years ago, from a restaurant.

For those of us who do home canning, there are specific rules as outlined in places like the NCHFP so that the food we can is safe.

For everyday safety, I am mindful of how many days items have been in the refrigerator and mindful of how long perishable food items or cooked food have been left at room temperature. After specified times they are disposed of.

bbstx wrote:

To have a thread show up in Cooking and HDC, start at Cooking. You can add HDC during the process of posting in Cooking. You cannot add Cooking during the process of posting in HDC.

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Thanks. Yes, I saw that later and that seems to be the one exception. It’s a one way street though. I only posted this to HDC because I was testing the cross-posting options from HDC and once I began composing, just completed what would have been a draft.

Nothing extra other than basic common sense things that I have done for 40 years ... my kitchen is very clean and I keep very few things on the counters.

Any extra things I might have been persuaded to do to my food purchases during covid, were quickly dropped from my routine as soon as they were shown not to make any difference.

I still eat one unwashed grape at the supermarket before buying a big bunch of grapes and I still eat raw cookie dough!

When I was in college working in the dining hall, I had to get a food handler permit. I don't know if any other states do this, but Washington does.

From their website:

Washington State requires that all food workers have food safety training before handling food served to the public. Food workers who take a food safety training class and pass the State of Washington exam on food safety basics are issued a Food Worker Card (also called a Food Handler Permit).

They have an online manual, if anyone is interested.

https://www.foodworkercard.wa.gov/en-us/manual

I'm fortunate that I nor my family members have contracted a foodborne illness (that I know of). I follow the standard guidelines, but I do intermingle my reusable bags between the grocery store, Target, farmers market, etc., without washing them nearly as often as I should. But any food that goes into a meal is adequately washed and prepared.

I have a friend who works in food production, and, based on her descriptions, many recalls are due to minor human error and miscalculations that require entire recalls of products that aren't necessarily dangerous to us as consumers. This isn't to say there aren't some serious and potentially deadly threats in our food production.

Wait. We’re supposed to wash our reusable bags?

I eat the little cherry tomatoes in packages-they are my candy. I never wash them. I probably should, but don't. I mostly don't wash anything I have to peel before eating or cooking. Most everything else, I do.

When making salsa, I throw the cilantro, tomatoes and jalapenos in a large bowl along with a splash of vegetable and fruit wash and let it sit for a few minutes and then rinse off.

chispa, Team Raw Cookie Dough right here. I mean, otherwise what's the point of making cookies if not to eat the raw dough? I've decided that it's the taste of raw flour that's appealing to me.

One of our grocery stores carries edible cookie dough! Tastes close enough to the real thing to be totally acceptable to me.

I nibble at raw cookie dough and raw cake batter. I also eat Eggs Benedict and raw oysters (not at the same time 😁). That I know of, I’ve had food poisoning 4 times in my life - twice from seafood restaurants (probably the coleslaw), once from undercooked chicken in Spain, and most recently from a banh mi sandwich (again, probably the raw veggies).

Bunny, for me I think it is the butter, sugar, vanilla combo that makes me want to eat raw cookie dough and cake batter.

DH and I went to see A Perfect Storm and afterwards commented that the production was so good, we actually felt a little seasick. Then we realized it was the KFC we’d stopped for before the movie. Too bad, because I always liked KFC chicken, and I haven’t had it since.

Another 👍 for raw cookie dough. I prefer it to the cooked cookie. I am a firm believer in washing hands the moment I enter the house.

I never buy industrial raised meat or poultry, only locally raised grass fed and grass finished all processed in small facilities. And I buy very little in the way of vegetables since I have an organic vegetable garden and freeze/can as well as keep lettuce and cabbage through the winter in the garden and harvest as needed.

Fruit I wash and dry before cutting into. Beyond all that, just wash hands and keep counters clean.

I admit I am afraid of commercial meat/poultry, especially the latter. Campylobacter, salmonella, all those warnings about handling it. Yucch! Just yucch!