Five Dollar Bill

I was in Tim Horton’s a couple of years ago waiting patiently in line for my turn to order a coffee and toasted bagel. There was a woman in front of me that ordered a bagel and a coffee as well. This woman has good taste! We were both waiting for the toaster to do its thing, and of course her bagel slid out to the toaster first. The overworked woman who took our orders grabbed the newly toasted bagel and buttered it. I was thinking how efficient things were running, when the good taste woman went ape shit.

She started to berate our server because she didn’t wash her hands between taking our cash and touching the bagel. You would have thought our server had just used a small handful of grass to wipe her ass, instead of taking cash. The woman demanded her money back and promised never to come to this restaurant again. I’m pretty sure that’s just what the server wanted to hear. I was going to tell crazy nutfugger lady that the money she was worried about actually came from her purse, but I didn’t need to talk to that kind of crazy. I took my bagel and thanked the server. She did wash her hands, but the damage had been done…right?

I’ve never worried overly much about how clean my server’s hands are. Sure, I would lose my appetite if I could smell shit when she came to the table, but barring that kind of craziness, I am pretty flexible. I don’t want to see visible dirt, and I would prefer not to see the cook picking his nose. The way that I see it is that we only get the tip of the iceberg when it comes to our food. The real dirty, disgusting stuff that our food is subjected to has been done long before it makes it to the store shelves.

There are an acceptable percentage of bug and rodent parts to be found in all of our grain products. When you really think about it, there is no way to avoid the odd grasshopper, bee, and mice or butterfly getting harvested along with the wheat. I suppose it is all protein, but I would rather not know about it.

I remember walking into Saint Laurence Market one day and just inside the door was a large table full of boar’s heads. I didn’t know what they were at first because they were quite literally covered with flies. Walking further into the market I saw the other parts of the pig with flies swarming all around. I was more than a little disgusted, and I wouldn’t eat any pork for at least a week. How could a guy turn down bacon, pork chops or ham? I have seen the kitchens in a few restaurants and most of them are far from sterile. I can live with that if I don’t have to think about it.

We humans have evolved over thousands of years and for a good part of that time we would eat pretty much what ever would fill our stomachs. Yes, we can and do get food poisoning from time to time and in generations past I am sure it happened more often than now. We are omnivores and that means we can eat pretty much anything that walks, crawls or swims or grows on this planet. With all of the disease that animals carry, why should I worry about the germs on a five dollar bill?