Works For Me Wednesday: Cross Contamination

I tend to be a bit squeamish about things. Sometimes things gross me out and sometimes they don't bother me. I guess it depends on my mood.

One thing that makes me squeamish all the time is raw chicken. Did you ever see that commercial on TV where they show the woman wiping down her kitchen counter and refrigerator door with a raw chicken leg? Blech!

I like to cook chicken. We eat it a lot. But every time I have to open a package of chicken or even worse, cut up raw chicken, I want to just throw away my cutting boards afterward. I never feel as if I can get them clean enough and fear cross contamination. Especially, when we lived in our apartment and didn't have a dishwasher. We "lost" more than just a few cutting boards in those days.

Then one day, I was in the dollar store and found some really thin plastic, flexible cutting boards. 2 in a package for a buck. Not a bad price. I didn't feel as bad using once or twice and then throwing it away. Plus, with our really sharp knives, they didn't really last much longer than a couple of uses anyway.

Now that we have a dishwasher, I use a regular heavy plastic cutting board for my chicken and other meats and a separate one for my veggies. I've labeled them "meat" or "vegetables" on the corners with a Sharpie Marker.

I still like to keep those other "disposable" cutting boards around, but we don't use them as often as we used to, but they do come in handy. Especially, for camping. Or when we're getting ready for a party and doing a lot of chopping.

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