Dirty this and that.

Agree that a little dirt never hurt anyone. Years ago I worked with a girl who used to disinfect all the paintwork in her whole house every week, doors, skirting boards etc as well as the regular housework. When she had visitors she used to clean the loo every time someone used it and yet she was always off sick with tummy bugs. I think you can be too clean.

I'm with uou on this one legs
Spent three weeks touring India eating from hotel buffets most evening - was obviously careful to avoid salad, ice etc but I wasn't ill once and I have a very dodgy digestive system . They were fairly high end hotels but I doubt that guarantees much

Perhaps you will tell me why when watching professional male chefs on tv so many don't use a mixer or a spoon when making a cake.But mix with their hands? Never saw Delia do this.I accept scones and pastry by hand but when adding eggs YUK! this really puts me off watching.

I know what goes into those heated cauldrons in some pubs and buffets. It is all the old veg from the buffet, put daily into a big pot with added Maggi powdered stock, about 60% salt, cooked down, liquidised and added to the pot to top it up.
One of my concerns with those pots is that they are just 'kept warm' all day, removed after service, placed in a walk-in fridge overnight and place back into the cauldron the next morning to haet up, never coming to the boil or even simmer.
I have seen one pot topped up for two weeks without being emptied and cleaned out.
I am not fanatical on cleanliness and both DD and I never use those anti-bacterial wipes or sprays, too clean is not healthy.
In fact DD makes a lot of her own cleaning products from traditional recipes.

Ugh! Don't like the connotation of "dirty", feels unhygienic. and now we have "naked" cakes too...
Why can't people just eat well, home-cooked food without being "clean"? Isn't that clean? I think it is a product of plenty to the point of excess. Vegetarians in the Third world are rarely so from choice [unless it is religious]; they just don't have the money to buy meat.

I would never use my hands to make a cake, but do for a lot of sticky dough, just very careful to wash hands between each item I am making.

My main objection is TV chefs wearing jewelery, outdoor clothes, long polished nails and hair every where, Nigella just makes me shudder.

How about the food on open display in places like Lidl, M&S, Sainsbury's, Co-op and probably others. Usually bakery items, uncovered, often at mouth level, just right for catching germs, etc. Many people don't both with the tongs either. I had to stop my elderly mother licking her fingers to rub open a plastic bag and then using those same fingers to prod and poke the plums she was thinking of buying. Just makes my stomach heave.

What is it that's so yucky about the 'keep soup hot cauldrons'? I suspect that they're not always kept at the correct temperature to inhibit bacterial growth but, OTH, I've had soup out of loads of them without any harm.

I agree with Legs55, we're getting too obsessed with overcleanliness...

I bought some frozen peas from Sainsburys this week, or rather my husband did. He tells me now he did notice when he picked the bag out of the freezer in the store that the peas were clumped into lumps, but he bought them anyway because he always shops very fast. Anyway, when we went to eat them, many of them were brown - is that what you mean by "dirty food" ???

We think that somewhere along the process they thawed and got refrozen again.

We've been watching this year's Great British Menu, which has featured a total of 32 young chefs, of whom all but one have been men (and unfortunately she didn't make it past the heats in a pretty testosterone-fuelled atmosphere. All very good natured, though, and I did find myself feeling very motherly towards them all. I don't yet know who won, as we are still catching up, but i can confidently assure you that none of the 32 wore much jewellery, none of them were wearing outdoor clothes, and their hair was short and mostly neatly cut (on was a bit tousled, because he had unruly wavy hair, but it was short and well out of the way. None of them looked like Nigella. They were, of course, chefs appearing on TV, not TV chefs.

They didn't refer to anything about things being 'dirty', but quite often referred to a grill-pan full of delicacies such as langoustines or Irish crubeens as 'bad boys' as in 'just getting these bad boys crisped up/ finished off', or whatever. I associated it with the use of words such as 'wicked', or 'sick' to denote approval or appreciation in teenage slang, at least when my own sons were at that stage over a decade ago.

And Felice - I'm gratified to learn that my suspicions about the specialist method of preparing the cauldron soup were proved correct, right down to the brand of 'flavor enhancer'. I should be glad that leftovers are not wasted in this age of austerity - perhaps we should rejoice

Please use your creative skills to close the bracketed phrases wherever I have forgotten to do so (everywhere, I think).

MaizieD since I read that, I have visions of all the leftovers being chucked into the soup cauldron and topped up daily .....

DH always goes for that option if we go anywhere for a quick lunch, I do sometimes too!

Oh just read your post felice

No more soup for me

I also watched Great British Menu, I quite like it as they are chefs from all walks of life.A lot of chefs would be unable to find the time to take part in such a programme.
I enjoyed seeing the self-taught Tommy getting through.
My only slight complaint is the judges obsession with 'new' styles of cooking almost bizarre at times.

I was put off soup couldrens for life when I watched a member of staff tip the remains of a half eaten bowl of soup back in because he didn't think there would be enough to go around .

Was this started as a serious thread or was it tongue in cheek? I find it hard to believe there are people out there who would not try something because of what it is called. I believe also that what the eye doesn't see etc and I work on the 15 second rule too, but nobody died eating in our house!

I think Carolpaint was asking if there was another website actually tigger, so maybe you could point her in the right direction.

I am not obsessed by cleanliness at all but one thing I really do not like is the current fashion of serving carrots with part of the stalks still attached.

It sounds so off putting though. Went into local supermarket to buy chocolate dessert that no 1 GS loves (my home made efforts are nothing like as nice as Cadbury's evidently) only to find they have the addition of - and I quote from the packaging - 'Green Slime'. Aghast I asked for the usual variety only to be told this is a special line for Halloween. Whether GS would eat them or not I couldn't buy a chocolate desert that looked as if it had snot added (excuse the vulgarity - there was no other way to describe what it looked like!!)

'dessert' - of course!

It wasnt a wholly serious enquiry other than I just found the term 'dirty'when used to descibe food a bit strange. I didnt think for one moment it was soiled especially as I saw it in M and S. It was just a lighthearted enquiry never meant to spark a heated debate about food hygiene but hey ho. I would just say that I found my experience of Campylobacter which lasted five months after eating fast food chicken rather wearing.

I would never eat anything from a Deli counter,having worked in one years ago.
At a well known supermarket.We were shown training videos about hygiene.
But dosnt work in practice your either hygienic or your not! I've seen people cutting up large slabs of cheese with streaming colds.Also been asked to brush olive oil on the continental sausage to "refresh" it. To cut down on the waste.Saw one colleague wipe the floor and then the counter.yuck, she didn't seem to think she'd done anything wrong when I reprimanded her.

Clean meat never fattened a pig !

As somebody who has just had to force down a slice of cake with fake blood on it ( don't ask) I can say that I am soon put off food anyway, and anything called dirty will not be bought by me.

I was digging into a bowl of complimentary nuts in a bar n Italy when i realised that the very hard ' nut' i was trying to crunch was a previously well sucked olive stone.Needless to say i didn't fancy any more!!