How to Keep Food Poisoning from Ruining the Holidays

Plan and Due Diligence to Prepare Yourself and Your Kitchen for a Large Meal

It’s your turn to host the big holiday gathering, and you’ve spent hours in the kitchen preparing the feast of a lifetime.  Friends and family gather, fill their plates and toast the chef before going back for seconds.  You bask in the glow of success and imagine giving Martha Stewart a run for her money.

But a few hours later, you’re basking in the glow of the bathroom tiles as you are hit with the worst stomach pain ever.  You can’t stop throwing up.  You’re convinced it’s a stomach bug when the phone rings.  It’s Aunt Fran, and she and Uncle Fred are ill with symptoms like the ones you have.  And so are dozens of other friends and relatives who attended your holiday bash.

It’s not a stomach bug or the flu.  It’s food poisoning!  The one guest you don’t want to invite to your holiday party.

Here are some tips for avoiding food poisoning and ensuring you don’t spend your holidays suffering from a preventable food borne illness:

• Plan a large dinner days, if not a week or more ahead of time.  If you are not that well organized or do not do this type of event regularly, then by all means write down a plan for each part or dish, including all ingredients and amounts needed, how long to prepare, how long to defrost, how long to cook and how many other resources (others) you will have to help besides yourself.  Start with the individual parts or dishes and break down each task to create that dish. Use or create a calendar with all hours of the day noted horizontally and create horizontal lines with a start and end time estimates for each task/process and who will be responsible for each task.   Knowing the day and time you are planning on serving, you can work your way backward for each process and determine at what point during the day or days before the serving time, you or your other resources would need to start that process.  This will allow you to sequence the tasks and assure you are not overextending yourself or your help.
• Your plan should include adequate time to defrost any frozen meats, seafoods or birds in the refrigerator (not on the counter overnight).   This is the safest way to defrost.  The outside layer of meats,  poultry etc. defrost and come to room temperature much sooner than the interior.  You want that room temperature to be the refrigerator temperature, not your kitchen counter temperature.  Bacteria under ideal conditions can double every 15 minutes.

• Don’t serve cooked meat on the same platter you used for raw meat.  Don’t reuse platters, utensils or cutting boards without first washing them in hot, soapy water to kill bacteria and germs.
• Don’t Leave Food Sitting Out:  this is a hazard at holiday buffets.  Everyone gathers around, enjoys a nice spread and then wanders off to watch football and doze off, leaving the food to sit out for hours.  Someone then comes along, has a bite and pays for it later.  Avoid this by flowing the 2 hour rule - Always refrigerate perishable or potentially hazardous foods within two hours after serving (one hour when the air temperature is above 90 °F).  I would recommend setting your kitchen timer to 2 hours right when everyone is being served. This way you don’t have to worry about the clock and when the timer goes off, you know it’s time to start putting everything in the refrigerator or freezer.
• Wash Food Carefully. Keep this in mind when serving fruits and vegetables, especially if you’re serving them raw.  Wash produce carefully to remove all traces of visible dirt.  A salad spinner is an inexpensive and very useful tool to wash, soak and quickly rinse off leafy produce. 
• Wash Your Hands. You want to be the source of tasty holiday meals, not contamination.  Keep liquid soap in a dispenser for hand washing and a paper towel dispenser (not a re-useable cloth towel) at your kitchen sink.  Recent studies have shown that antibacterial soaps have no more likelihood of preventing illnesses or removing more microorganisms than regular soap.  What's important is the action of thoroughly scrubbing under running hot or warm water for at least 20 seconds to loosen oil and grime where the bacteria hide, and washing them down the drain.  Wash your hands after using the bathroom, changing a diaper or petting an animal or doing any other chore outside the kitchen.   While in the kitchen, always wash your hands between tasks especially after processing raw meats, poultry or seafood (even if you do not directly touch the food).  Lastly, don’t prepare food if you are sick, including a cold, flu, stomach bug or diarrhea symptoms. 

Follow these simple, practical suggestions and you’ll have a holiday gathering that people will remember for its wonderful food and good times, and not because they spent the next day laid out in pain wishing they were never born!