New Food Safety App

"Is My Food Safe" is a newer free app to help you with those nagging questions, such as:

• Is that leftover item from last weekend still good?
• How long can I keep that opened container of sour cream?
• How long does it take to roast this whole chicken?

There's even a quiz "Is my Kitchen Safe?"  I took the quiz and got one wrong! Even though I am the Queen of Food Safety (and no one wants to hear about that, by the way), I missed the question about the safe way to thaw food. I picked the answer "in the refrigerator", but the right answer was "in the refrigerator and in the microwave".

Ok, I know you can thaw stuff in the microwave. But I also know that microwaves cook and thaw unevenly, and I was thinking about a friend who thaws meat in her microwave in the morning, and there it sits until she's ready to cook dinner (Yikes!)

To read more about the app, check out the Home Food Safety web site.

Tidbit: Top 10 Tips for microwave oven users

In years past, if you bought a microwave oven from an appliance store,  you could take advantage of microwave cooking classes. Nowadays, people pick up a microwave oven at big box stores, and you are on your own! (Open the box, plug it in and go.)

If you truly don’t know much about how to use your microwave oven to it’s full capacity, get your product manual out and start practicing! If you’ve lost your manual, a computer search will locate lessons via web sites and You Tube. Here are some microwave cooking basics from Linda Larsen at About.com. 

I bet that most people guess their way through cooking or heating up a food item, punching a few numbers and hoping for the best.   And because it seems so intuitive,  maybe you feel you don’t need to know more. Well, here are my top 10 tips for microwave cooking do’s and don’ts:

1. Use only “microwave safe” containers for heating and cooking; this means glass, ceramic, and plastics that are clearly marked “microwave safe”. Do not use leftover margarine, butter, cottage cheese containers or foam dishes that are meant for storing the original cold items and maybe leftovers from the restaurant.  These types of cold containers could melt and chemicals could migrate into your food during reheating in the microwave. Transfer leftovers to an OK cooking container or a plate before heating.
2. Do not use plastic storage bags to heat items in the microwave, unless they are clearly intended for heating (the “steamer” bags are OK).
3. Safe for microwave use: Wax paper, oven cooking bags, parchment paper and white (non-printed) microwave paper towels.
4. Not safe for microwave use: Brown grocery bags, newspaper, metal, or foil.
5. Microwave heating is very uneven. If a recipe calls for stirring a food half-way through cooking, turning a food over, or letting the food sit after cooking, follow those directions to help distribute the heat.
6. Microwave ovens are not ideal for cooking meat due to the uneven cooking. Some parts may get over cooked and toughened, while other parts barely get cooked. This is both a food safety and quality issue.
7. It is OK to thaw meat, chicken or fish in a microwave, but only when you are going to be cooking the item IMMEDIATELY afterward. Because of the uneven heating, the meat will be in the danger zone for bacterial growth if you forget and leave it in the microwave a few hours.
8. Don’t heat bread or rolls in the microwave. This is not a food safety issue, it is a quality issue. If you have ever tried this, you know the bread can turn out rock hard and not usable. Better to toast or gently warm bread in an oven.
9. Do use your microwave as a quick and easy way to toast nuts.  (How-to from Alice Henneman MS RD, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension).
10. You can use your microwave to dry fresh herbs, but look at these guidelines from Purdue University Extension so you don’t ruin them in the process.

 For more reading on microwave cooking safety:

Microwave cooking Safety, University of Arizona Extension

General Kitchen food safety from the USDA

Microwave oven cooking safely fact sheet from the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service

Happy microwaving! Please let me know if I forgot to address anything.

Q & A: Food Poisoning: What to do

Q.            I am trying to figure out what food caused me to have a problem with severe diarrhea. My wife and I ate almost the same foods on Sunday, except I ate some pre-cut cantaloupe cubes and she did not. The next day,  all day long I could not leave my house; I had to stay home to be near the bathroom.

            Is there any way to tell if a food is contaminated?  Or how do I know if there has been a recall on any food items (like the recalls you hear about in the news)? F.G. Hudsonville

A.            The trouble with food poisoning, or food borne illness, is that there is no sure way to tell if a food is tainted, by looks, smell or taste.  There doesn’t need to be much of the offending bacteria present to take hold of your system and wreak havoc.  And those of us with a compromised immune system (young children, pregnant women, older folks, and people with severe illnesses) who generally have difficulty fighting off the easy bugs, get into the most trouble.

There are several ways to report  a suspected food borne illness or food poisoning incidence. First, make an appointment with your physician; they can make a report to the correct agency (usually the local health department), and may ask for lab samples of your blood, stool, and urine.

Or, you could call your local health department yourself and let them know about your suspected incidence of food poisoning. They will ask questions about what food do you suspect, where did you buy it, when did you eat it, how long did it take for symptoms to appear, what are your symptoms, etc. Don’t be surprised if they ask you to remember what you ate 2-3 days prior to when you got sick, because some bacteria take two days or more to grow in your system and then make you sick. Rarely does a food immediately make you sick from food borne illness.

For ways to keep your home food safe, check out this brochure from the USDA.