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microorganisms inside livestock can become resistant to the sub-diagnostic doses of antibiotics that are often (in fact, usually) given to livestock in this country. Now this doesn’t mean they become super-bugs, capable of shooting webs or turning into rubber—they still die at proper cooking temperatures. The problem is cross-contamination in the kitchen. If you’re not diligent, you could end up with a strain of bug that won’t respond to the first few drugs that are tried. This is not good news. As a result, I’m starting to look seriously at switching to organic and naturally raised meats whenever I can, not for flavor as much as for safety.

Want to keep up with developments in food safety? check out www.fda.gov. They’ve got it all.

Sources

U.S Food & Drug Administration, Center for Food Safety & Applied Nutrition: Foodborne Microorganisms

and Natural Toxins (informally known as the “Bad Bug Book”). Available for downloading at http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~mow/badbug.zip

The Educational Foundation of the National Restaurant Association: Applied Foodservice Sanitation, 4th Ed. (1992) McGee, Harold: On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. New York: Fireside, 1984.

The Top 5 Activities to Be Pursued by a Cook

Number 1 : Keep up with Family

Food is heritage. It’s what makes “me” into “we.” Besides, even if you don’t like your family, everybody likes food. I keep a book of family recipes. They’re not all good, but a few of them are classics for my clan and I’d hate to lose them.

Number 2 : Travel

Whether you drive to the next county or the next hemisphere, nothing says where you are like the food you find along the way. When it comes to eating, beware the tourist guidebooks. Seek out the local favorites.

Number 3: Cook

Yes, this is fairly obvious, but the truth is, most of us cook as a means to an end: eating. What I’m suggesting is that you cook to cook. And keep a record of what you cook and what you thought of it before, during, and after the process.

Number 4 : Taste

Remember, flavor is a noun, taste is a verb, and it’s one we often forget to bother with. We’ll spend hours preparing food that we gulp down in minutes as if we’re afraid a band of hyenas might pass through and wrestle it away from us. So chew your food and taste it. If you’re with other people, stop talking for a minute and just taste. If you’re by yourself, turn off the TV, put down the book, and enjoy your interface with planet Earth. And I’m not just talking about fancy fare here. I’m talking about that ballpark frank, that cup of coffee, that Milky Way bar. Heck, if you’re going to have to work off the calories, doesn’t it make sense to enjoy them to the fullest?

Number 5: Read

Cooking and food connect to everything: history, art, literature, physics, chemistry, math—you name it, food’s got it. So, the more you read about food, the smarter you get about everything.

A Selected Reading List

Although I’ve never counted, I’d guess I have more than 500 books dealing with food. These are the titles that never seem to make it from my table back onto the shelf.

Outlaw Cook, John Thorne

For my mind and money, John Thorne is the best American food writer alive and Outlaw Cook is the Physiology of Taste of our time. Part cookbook, part meditation, Thorne’s book looks at everything from appetite to meatballs to the virtues of not being a very good cook. This is the book I reach for when the thrill is gone.

Cookwise, Shirley O. Corriher

Shirley is a hero and a friend and not only is her book full of delicious and reliable recipes, the text and illustrations explain exactly why they are delicious and reliable. Applicable food science for the cook who really doesn’t want to look at electrospectrographs (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, Harold McGee

Scholarly, scientific, badly dog-eared. This is the book cooks are talking about when they refer to the “bible.” Until McGee got his nerdy self into the kitchen, cooks