The Perils Of A Dirty Kitchen

Still not convinced that a thorough cleaning of our kitchen is the way to go? Do you think that the inspirational ability of a clean kitchen motivating someone to cook more is overrated? Well then, let us consider the dangers you face every time you step foot in there.

CROSS CONTAMINATION

Would you like it if a raw chicken jumped up and rubbed itself inside your bowl before you ate cereal? Probably not, and yet in the average kitchen, people break down their chickens about three feet from where they keep their plates. This number drops dramatically when those plates are unwashed and crowding your counter tops. And while it's extremely unlikely that the aforementioned raw chicken will start molesting your plate, the message is clear; a dirty kitchen increases the chances of raw, old, and decomposing food coming in contact with whatever you're making. As does whatever unpleasantness that food happens to be carrying, like Salmonella, E. Coli, Listeria, and other such nastiness.

"But I keep them properly refrigerated and cook my meat all the way through!" you might say. Well, that's definitely a good start, but tell me, did you wipe down every surface that your meat touched? Did you throw your other ingredients on the same cutting board as your meat without cleaning it first? Did you cut or debone your meat? In each of these circumstances you're leaving a residual of your meat that is now at room temperature and very much in the danger zone. And anything that touches those surfaces becomes a potential source of food poisoning, which I think we can all agree is pretty unpleasant.

CLEAN FLOORS


Good rule of thumb, if you can see what's making your floor dirty, then it'll probably feel pretty gross and if you can't, then it's going to be ridiculously dangerous. There's always the risk of pouring water all over the place, and most kitchens keep things like oil and butter on hand, things that are pretty transparent should they land on the floor. All it takes is moving a little too quick through your kitchen to cause a slip, and considering the amount of counter top space available, cause some pretty serious damage to your person. Taking a mop to your floor once a week should be bare minimum! Three or four times a week is far more ideal, if not every single day.

Oh, and if you're floor happens to be this wet, it should go without saying that cleaning up should be priority one before anything else. Do remember that most of the appliances in your kitchen run on electricity, and we all know how well electricity and water get along.

SHARP THINGS


Isn't this a fun looking picture? Now imagine sticking your hand in this sink while your attention is diverted. Slashing your hand wide open is, generally speaking, a bad idea. And you're certainly going to lose your enthusiasm for cooking should this happen......which it shouldn't, because you're going to keep your kitchen clean right?

The Dilemma Of Canned Goods

Since we've been discussing the optimization of one's kitchen, we should probably take a look at our pantries, which are most likely packed to the brink with stuff that looks just like this. Oftentimes, the canned goods can take up an entire cabinet or pantry's worth of space. So, the question must be asked: Do we really need all of this?

There are many reasons our cabinets are packed to capacity with non-perishable foodstuffs tucked in tin. The most common is pure tradition. Mom used to have tons of them, as did grandma, and it just became an unspoken accepted practice to do the same. When asked about it, the response is usually along the lines of "it's good to have for a rainy day."

The logic is sound, but bear in mind that mom and granny had rainy days that were significantly different from ours. Your mom probably had to live through the cold war, where stockpiling goods was a commonly promoted thing. And of course they had to suffer through a recession similar to the one we're in now, only without the luxury of a "dollar menu."

It's sad to say, but on our rainy days we're more likely going to order a pizza than crack open the stockpile of canned goods. Which means we've got a lot of food that we really have no intention of eating, taking up valuable space in our kitchens. Perhaps it's time to lighten the load.

Now CSD in no way suggests you completely rid yourself of all canned items in your possession. Simply to go through and filter out the things you're less than likely to use. Any item that you regularly eat and/or enjoy eating should stick around. And if the very idea of opening up that can and chomping on the contents makes your face scrunch up into a sour milk state, then it's probably best we get it as far away from us as possible. If you hate broccoli, then I guarantee you're going to really hate broccoli in a can. Having a well balanced stockpile of good in your pantry is meaningless if you don't eat it.

Here's a sampling of my ideal pantry and what canned goods it would contain:

• Spam
• Clams
• Tomatoes
  
• Mixed Fruits
• Evaporated & Condensed Milk
• Peaches
• Olives*
• Corned Beef*
• Pineapple*

(* denotes items that I wouldn't normally keep in my kitchen, but do so for the continuation of a happy relationship.)

Your item list may vary significantly. You may find the idea of eating spam utterly reprehensible, but I absolutely love the stuff when it's done right. Evaporated milk may not be the most tasty thing on a bowl of cereal, but it does wonders when making sauces or soups. And canned fruits are always tasty, and tend to be reasonably healthy as well. The goal is to have items on hand that you would want to make something out of. This way, you're less likely to go buy some fat and preservative loaded treat to munch on while you enjoy your rainy day.

Now, while I acknowledge that all people have different palettes, there are some canned foods that are simply a crime against nature. Here are some of my humble recommendations for items you should get rid of and never ever buy again:

CANNED TUNA

Sure it's healthy and a cheap source of proteins, but it tastes awful! Salty, briny, and very unpleasant to the palette. And people pour in tons of mayonnaise with their tuna to help remove some of that bitter taste, which also cancels out a lot of those health benefits. I can understand that times are hard, and one can't afford fresh tuna every day, but your body deserves better than that. And there are better alternatives out there....

CANNED BEANS

If you love beans, chances are good you buy them fresh and make them right. And if you hate beans, well then you're probably not going to eat them anyways are you?

CANNED CHILI

The mentality that holds true for beans holds true for chili. It's better when it's fresh and done yourself. And you don't pay that much of a premium for the real deal (in some ways it can even be cheaper,) so steer clear of the cans

CANNED PEAS AND CORN

As always, the real stuff tastes better and is usually cheaper than the cans. But, these two items are highly seasonal, which means you may not be able to buy fresh corn come November. The better alternative in this case, is to go frozen. One of the characteristics we enjoy so much about both corn and peas is the crispness, and that's not something you get from the canned variety. Being frozen retains the texture, and specifically in the case of peas, makes for a dining experience that is very similar to fresh.

CANNED SOUPS

Now bear with me on this one. I fully acknowledge that canned soup is basically a staple in this country, but this is a cooking blog, and I'm not here to talk about cooking stuff with clear instructions on the back of a can. I'm here to talk about making things that taste better than what you'd find in those cans. And I have never found a canned soup or stew that made me enjoy eating. I'm willing to guess that you haven't either. So, I relegate the canned stuff to something that is best made by hand.

Once you've made up your ideal list of canned items to keep, I would recommend keeping no more than 2-3 cans of each item. This would strike a good balance between having some backup food handy, and not creating to much excess clutter. Line each item up in neat rows to make locating it easier (I'm sure we've all seen the canned good shuffle from time to time, a person frantically pushing cans to the side looking for an item that "they know they had at least one more of.")

Feel free to share your canned experiences in the comments section below.

Your Cooking Environment

So, in order to inspire a bit of culinary initiative, we need to first start with our environment. If we're gonna dedicate ourselves to cooking more food in our homes, we need a setting that is conducive to a pleasurable experience. So, stand up and go take a look at your kitchen right now. Does it look anything like this?


If you've answered yes, then clearly your cooking environment needs some work.

We like our work spaces to be clean don't we? Of course we do. Clutter can suck the lifeblood out of any initiative we may be feeling. This means we're more prone to sit in the mess we made and do nothing, which is clearly unacceptable. So, if you can't get work done while sitting at a messy desk, then odds are you won't be able to cook for yourself in a messy kitchen. Therefore, this is the first thing we must fix.

STEP ONE: INITIAL CLEANING

So, take an afternoon, order a pizza if you must, and clean the heck out of your kitchen. We're talking floors mopped, counter-tops wiped, and all dishes washed, dried, and neatly put away. I want the place sparkling and smelling of bleach. This will be the hardest, and most unpleasant part of the job, but trust me when I say it is crucial. By starting with a clean environment, we can make the next part of this process that much easier to plan.

STEP TWO: DISPOSAL

This, despite being a little dirty, can actually be fun. It gives us the chance to make a clean slate, and honestly, how can you hate doing that? The idea here is to remake our kitchen into a place we'd actually like to spend time in. Remember, cooking should never feel like a prison sentence.

I'm sure many of you have caught the wide variety of remodeling programs on Fine Living, and have probably flipped through more than a few magazines of that ilk at your local bookstore. And I'm sure all of us have gone "ooh" and "aah" at this photos, and strongly desired to make our kitchen look that sharp. Well, if you have the money and time on hand to do so, I say go for it. Hire Ty Pennington if it's in the budget, and make yourself that photo-worthy kitchen you've been lusting after. Personally, I can't afford it, and I'm guessing neither can you. So let's talk about the things we can do without spending a dime (a price I'm sure everyone can appreciate.)

Did you know that the most popular wedding and/or housewarming gift is kitchen gadgets? Friends and family alike are always happy to give you a new set of spatulas or whisks or something that they figure you'll surely need. And usually, this means that you the recipient, will end up with tons of kitchen stuff that gets stuffed away in drawers because you're too nice to throw it out. And then one day you reach into your drawer to get a spoon and see this:


Just looking at this picture I can see at least half a dozen things you won't need. A good kitchen should run lean, utilizing only the most needed tools that can multitask for a variety of uses, and can be stored without too much effort. We want simple utensils, basic equipment, and none of that fancy stuff that gets peddled on late night infomercials.

So, how do we know which stuff we can get rid of? It's easy, just follow this guide.

KEEP THE GADGET IF:

It's something you actually use.

GET RID OF THE GADGET IF:

It is too uncomfortable to use.
It feels like it's cheap enough to break if you did use it.
It's something you find in the back of a drawer with a thick coating of dust on it.
The last time you handled the tool was when you stuffed it in the back of the drawer.
You have more than one of the gadget in question.

Toss all this culinary detritus into a box. From there you can give it to goodwill, or take it around the neighborhood, letting people pick items they're missing from their kitchens. Either way, we don't want it in our homes any more. Clearing out any unused tools and gadgets makes space for the stuff we do use. And space, is a very valuable commodity in the kitchen.

Once we've gotten rid of the tools, let's poke around the drawers for edibles. Do you have a drawer in the house that looks like this?


If you've just nodded embarrassingly, then you know that this will not do. We typically keep any food we plan on eating in either the refrigerator or on dedicated shelves/counter-tops that are within our line of sight. Food items that end up in a drawer are most likely to be forgotten. We're quicker to go buy ourselves a new bag of beans than use the bag we bought a year ago. But, mom always taught us not to throw any food that's still good away, so there those beans sit, getting older and older.

Let me assure you, you will never eat those beans. And even if you did, they'll probably taste so bad, you'll wish you hadn't. You can attempt to donate them to a food bank if you like, but it's probably easier to just throw them away. Either way, get all of that old stuff out of there. If the item in question has been sitting unopened for more than a month, I say it becomes fair game for the trash can. Remember, the idea here is to start fresh, and to build up the most effective kitchen we can, not to hold onto unusable remnants.

STEP THREE: REDECORATION

Once all of that stuff is out of your kitchen, you can now look at how to use all that wonderful space you've made for yourself. Feel free to be as pretty as you want (this would look nice here, and this would be oh-so cute here,) but do remember that efficiency is very important in the kitchen. And you want the things you use the most close at hand. So factor that into your redesign. Place similar items in similar drawers, making it easier to grab more than one thing at the same time. Move cookware and appliances to a comfortably close distance to the stove. If you have toast at every meal, it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to have the toaster reasonably close to where you put food on a plate. There are safety factors to be considered in all this, obviously we don't want any injuries in our nice refurbished kitchen, but I think you're all smart enough not to put flammable items near the heat, or electrical items too close to the sink. If in doubt about your appliances, follow the recommendations on your user manuals (which hopefully you still have. If you feel there is even the slightest chance that something could catch on fire, or cause an electrical spark because of proximity to water, it's best to not take any chances.

Clearly, this is not a process that can happen easily. It may require an entire weekend to do it completely right, but the rewards are well worth it. By the end of it all, you'll be standing in a kitchen that is clean, comfortable, and enjoyable to be in. And when you're staring at this shiny room filled with your hard work and accomplishment, I guarantee there will be a voice in your mind that says, "I'd kind of like to cook something now."