THAT’S COOL DADDIO’
Here comes the sun, Baby, at least in my part of the hemisphere. It’s trying real hard to be summer right now. I love warm weather. Dressing and flip-flops and shorts with my shirt open so the warm air can hit my chest. Girls won’t do that, but if men knew how to behave, they might.
Yes, the weather is heating up and human in us wants to do something fun. What about a picnic where we could invite a lot of people and drink beer and eat delicious food and dance and kiss if we want to ? Don’t you just love Summer? But….there’s an evil sinister devil afoot in this situation. It’s that freakin’ delicious food. I hate to be a Debbie Downer, but sometimes people forget the rules about keeping food safe. They get something called “Summer Complaint”. That almost sounds innocent. Oh, it’s only a complaint. It’s a warm day and the food is been sitting out for quite a while. I don’t think it’s been “that long” because look at it, it’s still beautiful. Taste it, it tastes fine…Chicken, green beans, deviled eggs all sprinkled with paprika and that potato salad looks like something to die for. Really? If this food is been sitting out on a warm day for longer than two hours you might just get your wish..
We don’t want to offend Aunt Hazel that drove up here from Bakersfield with her famous green bean casserole in her trunk and now it’s on hour four of being without any refrigeration.
If it looks good and smells okay and tastes okay, it’s okay right ? It’s okay to pop the last of the deviled eggs in your mouth even though it’s been five hours now and they’re warm and flies a been landing on them. Be a man, if it doesn’t kill you it will make you stronger…..lol. Besides with all that beer you’ve been chugging the alcohol will kill any germs. Dude, I don’t care how much beer you’ve been drinking, do not play Russian roulette with food. Have some chips but don’t eat food that’s been out over two hours.
Inside of the house I am a bit of a fanatic about cooling food off properly. We usually make food in quantity and cool it on a homemade cooling table with dual fans. I put this jerryrigged contraption together myself. With this arrangement and both fans on high I can get food from 212° down to room temperature in about an hour which is amazing. . That gives me an hour before the food becomes unsafe. This is a good time to refrigerate that food. keep verifying the temperature by stirring the pot and taking a temperature reading with an infrared temperature reading gun.
If you just air cool it for a little while and put it in the refrigerator kind of hot you gonna really mess up your other food. I bought a refrigerator thermometer that sends the inside temperature to an outside display that you can put next to the sink or anywhere and it tells you what the inside temperature of the refrigerator is. Believe me, you want to do everything possible to make sure that the internal temperature of your refrigerator does not rise above 40°. Sometimes it requires that you put the refrigerator on its coldest setting an hour before you put in a lot of warm things so that it can get a rolling start on making it an acceptable temperature. Set a timer to be sure and turn the thermostat back to normal when the refrigerator reached the proper temperature. My refrigerator tries to turn into a freezer sometimes when I do this and forget to reset it. . Please take care of yourself this summer, you lovely people. As a empathetic person I really want you to try to stay safe.
Don’t forget — — — — — — -When In Doubt, Throw It Out.
