Dear LPG,

Here is a story with a moral for you…

I went to visit a friend of mine one morning recently, who has lived alone for quite a while now but does a really good job of looking after himself.  He made me a cup of tea which we drank while sitting at his kitchen table and it was then that I noticed.  Beside the kitchen sink there was a bowl with a little steam rising from it.

He noticed me looking in its direction and said, ‘Oh, that’s a bit of chicken that I plan to cook for my dinner in a bit.’

Alarm bells rang in my head as I realised that his idea of defrosting it was to immerse it in a bowl of quite hot water and , to make it worse, he told me that he had started the defrosting process in the microwave but that was not quick enough.

While trying my best to be subtle, I mentioned my fears with regard to his defrosting method at this point and think that I succeeded in hiding my concern when he told me that he does this all the time. 

I managed to bring our conversation round to the subject of defrosting and, we eventually did a little Googling on his computer.  Even though I don’t remember my friend ever suffering from food poisoning, we both agreed that point number 7 on this web page was interestingly worrying! (►►►) 

I am not saying that mine is the best way, but I have to admit to being very old fashioned about thawing meat with my ‘take it out and put it in the fridge the day before approach’ and, although I know that there are other ways I tend to use the microwave as a heating device, avoiding the defrost button altogether.  I also tend to buy quite a few ‘cook from frozen’ contingency meat products when I shop, just in case I forget to do something about tomorrow’s dinner the day before.

I know that the ladies among us know the safest way to do these things but it occurs to me that my friend, who taught himself through necessity, thought his thawing method quite harmless but I think that some of the information we found online will make a difference to his future defrosting habits. 

So, I appeal to those who know all this stuff to make sure that, if they have any friends like mine, they just keep an eye when they can. 

FY, Lewisham.

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