Cuisine Hygiene

I'm sitting in the empty dining room of my sorority house trying to put together a presentation for a class today. I chose the DZ house because my dorm building lacks parking, and I chose the room for its tables and solitude.

I can hear our house cook,Harriet, preparing a meal- lunch, I presume, though it may also be dinner. Everyone adores her and raves about her cooking, but so far I have noted only mediocre cooking which, despite assurances made by the sisters, does not cater to the vegetarian needs of at least three girls. So I already don't like the woman for making me eat small portions of side dishes for dinner (I ate mashed potatoes and nothing more on Monday, because everything else was meat-related) at the weekly chapter dinners. I've skipped out on them twice now, simply because I can't even eat the food.

So beyond this mild irritation, I've now become better acquainted with the cook's hygiene. Sitting here in the dining room, I can look into the industrial kitchen where she's working. Because I really am that anal, I peered in to see the cleanliness, and wasn't surprised to see a lack of gloves on the woman. I immediately went back to my work and tried to move beyond it, but apparently old Harriet has a bad cough- as is apparent in her consistent hacking in the kitchen. Perhaps, you may think, she's coughing into her shoulder or arm? No. At one point she walked in front of the open doorway to get something from a shelf, coughing out into the kitchen air and, noticing my sitting at the table, directly at me. Niiice.

A moment, later, I hear nose-blowing. Not just a brief, "I have a sniffle" nose blow, either. This was a full-on, minute-long session. In the kitchen. Not followed by any hand-washing.

I will openly admit that I am extremely anal about food-preparation cleanliness.
But this has to be something with which someone else can sympathize.

I don't think I'll be eagerly eating many more meals at the house.