Vocal Voices

... has just issued a warning that cooking burgers, BBQ style, is a food poisoning risk. It also applies to chicken, sausages and kebabs.

The detail is all there. The reasons, the whyfores, how to avoid, all you need to know.

Erm, it's the end of August. The BBQ season is coming to an end, it will be Autumn soon. Shouldn't this warning have been out at the end of May or the start of June?

Are we paying these people to be useless on purpose?

Erm, let me see. Apart from the timing, how about this...

"If you can't cook don't BBQ because you might not cook the food properly and poison yourself"....

It's called common sense and if we encouraged it we wouldn't need to send out all these public health warnings for people who have grown up knowing that they don't need common sense.

I think the worrying part of it is those trendy TV chefs who push increasingly for meat to be served very rare. Sometimes it doesn't look as though it has even seen much heat it is so bloody. I shudder when I see this and see the way they literally push these cooking novices to serve their meat like this.

Now they are even talking about serving their pork "nice and pink". Are they mad? Have they no idea about parasitic infections? I'm afraid that's not for me. Even this craze for sushi - there are parasites in fish and if it is being served raw then there is danger in that too. I know they marinade it, but I wouldn't eat it like that.

There is a good reason why Man began to cook his food and we should not be led astray from using common sense by trendy food fads and trendy chefs.

We've known this for years.

That's why we never go to a BBQ event.

And I agree with Rodo, and never eat half-cooked meat. How can they serve meat like that
and still call themselves Cooks? I think women make the best cooks, and men should get a
man's job.

It is not that long ago when every family had a well thumbed cooking 'bible' in the kitchen, something like the Good Housekeeping Cook Book. These tomes gave tried and tested methods of preparing, cooking and serving all the major food groups. There were simple recipes able to be used as bases for more exotic dishes.

Now we have cooking confusion and information overload from every quarter, be it magazines, papers or the TV. Cook books have become trophy items for display purposes. It is cruelly ironic that the more we see and hear about cooking the less of it we actually do.

I loved my Good Housekeeping cookery book. it was given to me as a wedding present first time around - I was a very young bride at 18 and couldn't cook anything much apart from a roast dinner It was great, saw me through cooking for dinner parties and learning to bake, and was well thumbed and dog-eared when it was unfortunately ruined - along with many other books and my vinyl record collection - in 2000, whilst in storage during a house renovation

Bloody meat can cause food poisoning? Who would have thought it

We were taught food safety and hygiene in home ec in school (I was going to say that it wasn't that long ago but it was the early 80s), it was one of the basics that we had to know. It's a subject which is barely in the curriculum though now, if the school my boys went to is anything to go by. They did 'food tech' but only for a few weeks and hardly had time to go in depth in a single period lesson when they had a practical to do (which always resulted in them spending their lunch break finishing off).

Aside from school though, I observed the correct way to do things in the kitchen at home.

We are getting our two involved in making the entire meal one day a week. They do it with Geoff as I just don't have the patience at the moment. They choose the meal, we shop
For ingredients, and add up the cost. They are 5&7 years old. we only started this term, and it's going good. G taught me to cook, so he's the best man for the job. he did all the cooking for the first 10 years together (before kids).
We have the Edmonds cookbook. It starts with how to boil an egg, through roast dinners, cakes etc to fancy desserts. Pretty much every kiwi home has one.

We cook all sorts on the BBQ from sausages to rotisserie chicken. But like you say, you have to know what you are doing and start with the easy stuff first.