I woke in my chair just after midnight on Monday morning, feeling stiff and misshapen I’d missed the chance to post on the day I was describing so I forced myself to stay up long enough to add photos, but couldn’t be bothered with captions. Then I posted and realised, too late, that then I I’d forgotten the title.
Fortunately Albert Schweitzer was there to supply the deficiency.
Things got worse when I started to get ready for work. My first clumsiness was to knock the sliced beef off the kitchen counter, where it landed with a slap on the floor. It probably picked up millions of bacteria despite my application of the Ten Second Rule. This, as most of you will know, states that food is still fit to eat if you pick it up less than ten seconds after it hit the floor.
I’ve also seen it described as the Five Second Rule. No way that’s going to happen. It takes me longer than that to bend these days.
Thinking sensibly, for once, I decided the risk wasn’t worth it and, regretfully, binned the meat.
Then I remembered what a doctor had once told me when I was discussing unpasteurised apple juice. According to an American website I’d read you have to pasteurise juice before drinking. We’d been happily pressing for years and feeding to all and sundry from 5 to 95 years old. He said that if you drink it immediately after juicing, the microorganisms haven’t time to multiply and cause problems, and told us there was no reason to stop doing it. So I thought. And I decided that if I ate the beef immediately I should be OK. Fortunately I’d just put a new bag in the bin so that was clean.
Anyway, with the addition of horseradish sauce I enjoyed beef sandwiches for breakfast and suffered no ill effects.
The second thing he told me was that I could safely disregard most food hygiene advice from Americans as they worry too much.
Of course, this was the same man who cut his finger tip quite badly with a power saw and tied it all back with a bandage which became quite grubby over the next few weeks. When I mentioned the possibility of gangrene he just muttered that it would either heal or drop off. And, remarkably, it did heal.
I also dropped the phone, knocked it out of Mark’s hand (twice) as we both tried to pick it up, rendered the scanner inoperative, dropped stamps all over the floor and generally had an uncoordinated sort of day.
All that was as nothing compared to the day suffered by the mother of the owner of the Chinese Takeaway between the old shop and the new shop. She was burning cardboard boxes in the back garden when the fire spread to a pile of dry conifer trimmings. It then spread to one of the dead conifers.
When the opticians on the other side noticed flames higher than their roof they decided to call the Fire Brigade.
That’s why today’s photographs show a fire engine, ash on top of my car, and some grumpy firemen. It seems they had better things to do.
Pingback: Cerebration and some Unfortunate Events | quercuscommunity
You need a few germs and stuff to build up your natural immunity. Too much cleanliness kills.
That would make a good slogan “Too much cleanliness kills”.
You’re a riot. And we Americans DO tend to worry too much – but I think that is being remedied by the current establishment. Most of us now just throw up our arms and say “Whatever.”
I’ve been worrying more since you got a new president…
We used to make our own apple cider (’cause of the must left in, not the alcohol..juice is that clear stuff from the store), and then we froze it. It’s the way I prefer-UNpasteurized. When we gave it friends they happily took it, even with the mention of it being UN. No one has been taken away..the doctor is right, many Americans worry too much! BTW, doesn’t horseradish sauce kill anything? I rather think it does!
Horseradish certainly tastes like it kills things. I once chewed a piece of horseradish leaf to see if it had potential for salads. It doesn’t – it’s so strong it literally made my eyes water.
A reasonable level of dirt seems to be beneficial.
We like to watch our guests (even my granny once) not listen when we say…this is should be used sparingly!
Yes, you need to work up to it gently. 🙂
Phew! What a day! Glad the fire did spread. As for dropping food on the floor…often times it’s the animal hair that stops me from eating the dropped food. 😉
I brushed the bits off first – I’m not a slob! 🙂
Hilarious, Quercus. Have you ever tried your hand at Sitcom scripts?
It did once pass through my mind, but got filed under “Good Intentions”.
🙂
Good thing someone bothered to call the firemen; it would even have been good if the woman had called them, or maybe even used common sense and prevented it. It is really easy to burn up stuff by accident, so NY state bans burning until the middle of May, figuring that many of the people are too dopey to do it safely, so that time period gives the place a chance to rain sufficiently, in theory.
I have also heard the various-second rule on food, and the corollary of ‘kissing it up to God’: you pick it up, make a token smooch in its direction, and presume that deity of choice will take care of it. These days I guess you do reiki over it–
Dirt is good for you. 🙂
https://draxe.com/eating-dirt/
Not so sure about ash.
I think it depends what was burned, actually–wood, no biggie; plastic, very bad.
Cardboard and dead trees.
Plus whatever was underneath that in the yard, and tinsel–I’m give that a miss.
🙂