How Fragile *is* Cake These Days?
Decorating By indydebi Updated 29 Nov 2009 , 10:05pm by cindycraig
OMG Jamie... I eat raw burger too. I always taste my raw meatloaf/meatball mix to make sure there's enough salt and herbs in it and it has raw burger, pork, and veal AND raw eggs. Sushi is my favorite meal... I have left milk out for hours and popped it back in the fridge (for the family.. we have a separate fridge for the biz)... I leave my butter in the cabinet (how else are you supposed to use it??? It's rock hard if you don't)... I am a very clean person but not a bleach-a-holic... my kids eat things off the floor/ground/tray at the mall (OMG right??)... raw cookie dough is a MUST... eating cake batter is just natural... it's also these small chance exposures that get our bodies used to dealing with germs. Your immune system... use it or lose it.
We eat a regional food around here called Parisa (Per ee sa). It is like the meat equivalent of ceviche. Raw steak meat is put through a grinder with peppers, onions, cheese, and seasonings. Then shaped into a ball, placed on a dish, and eaten with crackers. YUM!!!
I'm like K8, I store things in my microwave and even my oven. Right now, a big vat of Halloween candy is in the oven, to keep the kids from seeing it.
After this weekend, I am going to pack it up and save it to put in my daughter's birthday pinata on New Year's Eve!
My kids will eat anything off the floor, too. Once when we were out to get ice cream with my brother-in-law, we were walking down the sidewalk and my daughter dropped hers in front of the stroller. I picked it up, slid off the dirty underside and put it back on the cone. Talk about street food. My brother in law about vomited...
"God made dirt and dirt don't hurt!" 
I am sure we have all heard this a time or 2.
http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-nature/health-myths/five-second-rule.htm/printable
^^^ The results of a study on food dropped on the floor ^^^
We ARE weakening our kids immune systems. Prents insist on giving their kids anti-biotics when they virus caused illnesses, which now causeing the anti-biotics worthless. My Goddaughter coughs and ther she goes off to the doctor for anti-biotics. Her grandma and I always "debate" this. She says she did it to her son's and I tell her that's why they are unhealthy now. All this anti-bacterial stuff, NOT good for us. It is weakening our skins natural defenses. Ok. Off my soap box.
I remember my Grandma telling me that waaayyy back when there werent refrigerators, you could eat meat up until it was smelly, with a green slime. I know eeewww! Now I shop for all my meat before 10am to pick up the discounted meat that is past its due date. Never ever had a problem, and its about 30% off too. Straight home to the freezer. Sometimes its hard to tell if your browned ground beef is browned yet tho!
Course, this is the same Grandma that would tell us wed get worms if we ate raw cake/cookie/any dough batter.
Oh, and we need to hear from all you dead cakers that have died from tasting cake batter for the perfect flavoring!
I still stuff our turkey too and any chickens I decide to roast. My MIL quit when she saw a new report on how terribly dangerous stuffing a bird was ..... HMMMM ..... I wonder if some of these special health reports are written by people similar to those who tell brides how to save money on wedding cakes.
Ooh, stuffed chicken? Never thought of that, I'll have to try it tonight, YUM!
i have somewhat dumbly volunteered to do a work xmas cake (no apprecation or understanding of it from them, as you will see...). i said i will make a sponge cake, or if they want fruit, i will need to buy it (too lazy really, not enough time or it to taste good).
this results in a discussion on how it might be out a day or two, and sponge would go bad. fruit cake would be better, it lasts a few days.
reality - which i didnt bother explaining - is that fruit cake lasts months, and my sponge lasts a good 5 days without any changes (and a day or two more as it gets eaten).
another germaphobe story... one of the women at work was pregnant, and has had the baby. spent the whole time being pretty paranoid (more than most first time pregnancy/ mums i have known). one of the women mentions taking the baby swimming. absolute refusal from mum. she is worried he will catch some thing in the water. if i thought anything could survive that much chlorine id be scared too! (no one at work is a pool specialist, but the consensus was nothing does survive!)
xx
Debi, I love your Mom! I throw my turkey into the oven at 275, before I go to bed. When the smell wakes me up, it's done. Even the meat thermometer says so. My grandmother cooked like that, and now, many years later, so do I. I cook all my roasts on low heat, then turn up the temp to brown at the end.
Isn't that exactly what slow cookers do? So how is it wrong in an oven? I'm right with you, I think it's just fine!
Sorry if this has been mentioned earlier in this discussion, but part of the reason for the extra caution in food handling is to protect people who have compromised immunity. When you are serving to a group of people, you may have some with any number of common conditions which make them more vulnerable to illness. When people say they have never gotten sick from some unsafe food handling practice, I think it is often because they have a strong immunity system.
I totally agree with you, and that being said there is a lot I do at home, but would never dream of in a business setting. I still think we need to get rid of all this antibacterial junk--I mean regular soap and the friction of washing your hands fights bacteria just fine, it doesn't need the extra scary stuff in it. (I think I said not to get me started 
)
brincess--I think I'd be more worried about the chlorine, gives my kids rashes if we go too often.
as for the leeches, I realize they still use them, but not in the indiscriminate way they once were--makes me wonder what people in 100 years will say about us, lol.....
Have you ever noticed how when it says to thaw in the fridge for several days, every time you follow the package directions just right, when you check it the night before it has a solid rock of ice in the cavity?
That's totally happening to me today! I've got a chicken sitting on my counter (yes, my counter), that I can't pull the giblets out of because they're still frozen! And if I pull too hard, that stinkin' paper they're in will rip to shreds.
http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-nature/health-myths/five-second-rule.htm/printable
^^^ The results of a study on food dropped on the floor ^^^
Yet another way they are making us paranoid--like I'm going to spread salmonella on my floor, let my kids drop stuff on it and pick it up and eat it.
Most of the bacteria around us is neutral or beneficial to us anyway, and I want my kids to get that extra dose to help their immune systems, heck I eat stuff off my floor on occasion.
Have you ever noticed how when it says to thaw in the fridge for several days, every time you follow the package directions just right, when you check it the night before it has a solid rock of ice in the cavity?
That's totally happening to me today! I've got a chicken sitting on my counter (yes, my counter), that I can't pull the giblets out of because they're still frozen! And if I pull too hard, that stinkin' paper they're in will rip to shreds.
I rinse it out in the sink, melts the ice enough to get the stupid bag out.
Oh pul-leaze people! I used to drive my MIL nuts because instead of giving my then-baby some cheerios in a cup, I'd just throw a handful on the carpet in front of her. WTH? She was just going to dump the cup of cereal on the floor ANYWAY!! This way I didn't have to wash a cup!
I do that all the time in the kitchen when I'm trying to cook dinner and my baby's fussing. Just as long as my DH isn't home...
I knew we'd turned a corner years ago when 'freshness dates' started appearing on products.
My FIL worked at a dairy, and their milk's "sell by" date was stamped in code. That way the customers would still by the milk that had a sell-by date in 1 or 2 days, because it was still good and they didn't have to freak out about it being bad in 1 day.
I've also bought milk that went bad before the sell-by date. You just gotta use that nose, people! (and the store will refund your money if you tell them it did!)
Wow, I've gotten a real kick out of this thread. My kids are the healthiest kids I know. They eat food even after they drop it on the ground at the zoo! I've always said they will either have the best immune systems around or get some exotic disease. AND I don't know about cake going "bad". It has never lasted long enough in my house to know.
Ok, love this thread!
Just wanted add for any who didn't know, in general salmonella on eggs is on the shells. It's quite rare for it to be IN the egg, so if you are worried, wash the eggs before using them. Then if you should taste your raw egg the chance of salmonella is even less.
We always leave butter out, and goodness cake has to be left out! Covered of course, but I don't like the way the frosting tastes when it's so hard.
We use our slow cooker all the time in the winter, and our foods cook all day long. And we have been known to let meat thaw on the counter.
So far none of us have gotten sick, and I'm no spring chicken. 
I have LOVED this discussion! For the record I am a physician - but am also a woman "past a certain age". The germ thing has just gotten out of control. We used to camp alot when I was a kid and I did the camp counselor thing one summer - dirt and bugs in the food was just extra protein
When your grandma said everything in moderation and nothing to extreme - she was right in so many ways. Leave the eggs and butter out until they are room temp - won't kill you. Eat the raw cookie dough - unless you've had a bone marrow transplant. Cut the fuzz off cheese - mold makes some of the tastiest cheeses in Europe. Cake, cookies and bread should be on the counter - not in the fridge - how else will they get eaten!!!
Sometimes its hard to tell if your browned ground beef is browned yet tho!
A friend who owned a grocery store with a real meat counter (you tell them how many pork chops you want and they go in the back and cut you 6 or 8, wrap them in white butcher paper and hand it to you .... no prepackaged meats!) told me that when beef touches beef, the meat will turn brown where it touched. She used to get so mad at customers, who would point inside her meat counter and tell her "Not that one ... it's gone bad!" because it looked brown. When in reality, she had just sold the one that was on top of it, which turned the one on the bottom brown.
Brown meat isn't necessarily bad meat.
Oh pul-leaze people! I used to drive my MIL nuts because instead of giving my then-baby some cheerios in a cup, I'd just throw a handful on the carpet in front of her. WTH? She was just going to dump the cup of cereal on the floor ANYWAY!! This way I didn't have to wash a cup!
My son has been eating off the coffee table since he was old enough to pull himself up on it! Only now at almost 15 months am I bothering to teach him to eat from a cup/bowl. Many a morning I have nursed the kid, stuck him on the floor and chucked a handful of cheerios on the coffee table (not Kix, they roll too much!) saying "Voila! Breakfast is served!" ...and then promptly crashed on the couch until I was called for a refill. There is so much futility involved with parenting that I'm not gonna cry over spilled cereal, it's not worth the aggravation. The only annoying part is when you've stepped on 3 in a row, but hey that's what vacuums and brooms are for right?
I swear my first son never had one germ in his mouth for the first 6 months of his life. I was so worried about him getting sick! And guess what? He was sick all the time! I finally started letting him be a kid and get dirty and now he's the pillar of wellness. I told the doctor letting him lick the floor was the best thing I could have done.
I swear my first son never had one germ in his mouth for the first 6 months of his life. I was so worried about him getting sick! And guess what? He was sick all the time! I finally started letting him be a kid and get dirty and now he's the pillar of wellness. I told the doctor letting him lick the floor was the best thing I could have done.
My mom tells the story of how I (being the oldest) was always bundled and sanitized to the "N"th degree and I was the most sickly kid she had. By the time she had all 6 kids, she was over that. Sister #3 was always outside in the winter with no socks, untied shoes, an open coat (if she had one on at all) and she was never sick!
I checked in on this one because I saw that indydebi had just chimed in...and I crave her commentary! I am glad to hear all of you saying to lighten up! I have twin 5 year old boys and honestly they used to drink out of the toilet and often still share the same toothbrush if they both are in the mood for the Batman brush. It's life and I am choosing my battles. Bring on the fuzzy cheese!
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