My Soup That Stirred The Pot

So after yesterday’s post, all kinds of comments were generated on Facebook regarding proper food safety, storage & heating methods. Clearly too many of you were not fortunate enough to have a mama like mine and have already killed incalculable brain cells with your NOT SO best practices and methods, bless your stupid hearts! I’m going to spell it out for you so that you don’t throw those mutated brain cells down to the bottom of the bowl to be scooped up and carried along by another generation, and I will consider it my public service announcement AND blog for the day. Here are a few rules from my mama that you should follow to the letter:

A – Never ever store things in plastic baggies and then reheat & eat them! That’s dangerous because those thin little plastic things leach into your food and come out of your mouth later. Haven’t you ever seen those people that sit in corners and just drool?? That drool is actually the melted plastic coming out of their mouths! We decided this only after Mom bought that Seal A Meal thing to vacuum seal all those little bags of spaghetti. It makes total sense, and we count our blessings that we discovered the correlation in time. How is this not common knowledge? I’m sure you’re all going to think about that the next time you see a drooling hobo on the corner, huh?! I bet THAT GUY grew up on Seal A Meals! You are only supposed to use those things to store dry food snacks one time only and they are never to be washed and reused.

B – Only morons cover their food in the microwave with a thin layer of plastic wrap to keep it from splattering chunks all over the microwave. That’s a fact. If the sturdier baggies leach chemicals, then can you IMAGINE what that little film can let go of? That is not steam coming off your food while you eat, Honey. It’s your brain cells evaporating. Use a paper towel next time.

C – ALWAYS pop out your healthy frozen dinner onto a microwave safe plate before heating it in its self-contained cancer-causing receptacle. You just turn the tray upside down and twist it out like an ice-cube tray. Sometimes it breaks up a little bit and the tray falls apart, but you just throw the little black shards away before you heat so that they don’t sink into your delicious sauce or vegetables or whatever and make you choke. I wonder if it’s a big conspiracy by Big Frozen Foods to make us sick which in turn causes us to look for Healthier Choices and Leaner Cuisines in the freezer section to boost our immune systems. Big Frozen Foods = B.F.F. which does NOT mean the same as giggly little preteen BFFs.

D – Do NOT pop styrofoam into the microwave. It WILL pop! I thought everyone knew this?!?! Apparently not. If you choose to risk it, then you’d better be sure you have on your good panties because when the fire department shows up to rescue you after too much smoke inhalation and toxic FUMES from the melted styrofoam they will bring you to the emergency room for resuscitation. Now all of those people are going to have to cut off your clothes to revive you and if you have holes in your underwear then you’ll embarrass your mama by making her look like she never taught you any better. We learned this when Mama used to watch George Clooney play a doctor on E.R. You know what? It’s really just best to cover your ass by not even attempting the styrofoam-heating-cause-you’re-too-lazy-to-get-out-a-real-plate method to begin with.

E – Metal never goes into the nuker. This is a serious matter with heavy consequences. I mean, do they even make metal plates anymore? This topic is probably moot because I think the only people that use metal serving dishes are prisoners who have those nice little divided metal trays for their bland food, but I’m going to include my heavy metal advice just in case I have some secret admirer inmates still following me since college when I was too stupid to refuse their collect calls just in case it was a friend that got busted at a bar with a fake I.D. and needed bail or something. (Mama would DIE if she knew that!)

F – Always cook your chicken or pork until it’s no longer juicy – like 20 minutes beyond what the Junior League cookbook says. It’s better to have dry meat than have to meet the doctor and explain that you poisoned your own self with The Salmonella by not using common sense around raw pork or poultry. That’s a kitchen FOUL!

G – Wash off the tops of your Coke cans before you open them. Some nasty fella may have picked his nose or scratched his butt or vice versa before he picked up that can and put it into whatever YOU got it from. When you open it and pour it out, all the grossness flows out with your drink through the mouth hole making you sick and forcing a hard lesson learned through a soft drink. (By the way, that actually means ALL your soda cans because we call everything a Coke down here Q: “Want a Coke?” A: “Sure!” Q: “What kind? I’ve got Sprite, Diet Coke, Sunkist…”)

H – Do not feed your kids Spaghetti O’s and then store the leftovers in the can to save for later. O! What a nO nO! Somehow the can will turn POISONOUS so I don’t think you’re supposed to do it with the Alpo for the dog either. It’s bad. Like REALLY bad. It will make you sick AND dumb. It’ll probably make the kids drool too and not like Pavlov’s dog in a good way.

Finally, the general consensus from yesterday regarding storing a big ol’ pot-o-soup is that you may store it in the container you cooked it in overnight if you have no other option because one night isn’t going to kill you even though my mama says it might. Now… I’m going to go eat some SOUP. If you don’t hear from me by tomorrow, someone please call my momma.