Cornell University, which has one of the most highly regarded food science programs in the United States, is our group’s school of choice, As I mentioned yesterday, six of us attended Cornell, my mother also attended and I was a member of the faculty for ten years as a Clinical Professor. Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences houses their Department of Food Science, which is indeed considered among the top food science programs globally. It’s consistently ranked at or near the top for food science education and research. One of our group, son-in-law John, graduated from the Ag School (not in food science, but Ag is Ag, right?) This is all relevant because today we had a food handling issue that caused us some significant debate and we could have used a food scientist.
Our plan for the day was to drive up to Dillon Colorado and check into our Airbnb at about 3 pm. That left us with a good part of the day to enjoy ourselves in the outdoors of the sunny Rocky Mountains of Colorado, west of Denver. As I have mentioned, son Tom & Jenna spend a lot of time out and about doing outdoorsy things in the area, so they came up with the idea of us going to a place called Evergreen Lake, which is in between Denver and Dillon, about an hour’s drive from their home. Evergreen is a lovely public park with picnic tables and a kayak rental facility. People come from all around to kayak and paddleboard on this still, medium-sized, man-made lake with its lovely meadows and mountain views in all directions. It was busier today than Tom expected, but we eventually found a parking spot and the group proceeded to book kayaks for those who wanted to brave the waters, while the rest of us found a shady picnic table and went about organizing a picnic lunch from a nearby deli. We had plenty of time so we didn’t mind the half hour wait for rental kayaks. And the kayaking for one hour was both the right amount of time for the kayakers and for those who walked to the nearby deli to buy the picnic lunch. All in all, it was a lovely way to spend three hours. When we were done, we piled in the cars and headed to Dillon, a ride which should’ve taken us a little more than an hour, but ended up taking us an hour and a half due to Friday traffic on Rt. 70. We got to the Airbnb at 3:30, having left Tom & Jenna’s at 10 am.
That’s when the controversy began. You see, while we had planned to eat out in Dillon that night, we planned to have a BBQ the next night on the deck of the Airbnb. Tom & Jenna had brought chicken and hamburgers for dinner and eggs and bacon for breakfast. Those items had stayed in the cool lower level of their Subaru cross trek and remained more or less cool for the day. The food scientists in the group were concerned that the unrefrigerated perishables were a bacteriological hazard by the time they went into the refrigerator at the Airbnb. We did not take a poll at that moment over the status of the BBQ staples, but I suspect that as a group, we would have had a range of views of the edibility of the various items. Chicken was clearly at the top of the concern list, but were eggs a concern? Everyone worries about germs and bacteria to different degrees. Even members of the same family see the microbial world very differently.
My kids are all grown up now. They range in age from 43 to 30. They are all married and living their own lives around the country. Kim is not technically mother to any of them, but is much loved and highly respected by them all. I was absentee father to all three, but always engaged with each of their lives. I am the classic family patriarch that they all follow to a point and yet who they love to make fun of whenever they can. These trips are supposed to be ones that they now orchestrate themselves, and I am just supposed to go along for the ride (…with my AMEX card, by the way). I’m not supposed to get in between their minor skirmishes and I’m supposed to let them settle things themselves. But it never happens that way.
I could tell that this food science issue had all the makings of a family healthcare disaster on several levels. Remember, besides the three kids, there are also three well-educated spouses with various dietary views and needs and who collectively have 35 years experience with one another and us, not to mention, two little girls, who more or less eat what is placed in front of them. It doesn’t help that this drama unfolded at 9,200 feet of altitude during a trip when everyone is on altitudinal tenter hooks to one degree or another and trying to stay hydrated. There is a lot of “how are you feeling?” going around the group and no one wants to be wondering about the dangers of adding more microbes into their systems this weekend. There is literally and figuratively enough getting under everyone’s skin.
That’s when the old man decides to step in to do what no one else in the group really has the unilateral power to do, make a command decision. Debate on the food science and food handling is a minefield. Like many things in life, it is simply easiest to throw money at the problem. After dinner, I insisted that me and my two sons go to the store to get some soda we were missing. On the way, I did the silverback gorilla thing and said we were buying 100% replacement perishables and tossing out all that we had previously brought. No questions. No recriminations. No debate. No blame. It was a small price to pay for peace in the family for the weekend. There would be some bruises, but no gaping wounds or pumped stomachs.
I then used my AI engine while my sons were executing my commands in the store to see what the reality was. It told me that if you leave food exposed to 75°F temperatures (not refrigerated), this is in the “danger zone” (40-140°F) where bacteria multiply rapidly. All these foods should be discarded after 2 hours maximum at 75°F and 1 hour maximum if ambient temperature is 90°F or higher. 75°F is well within the danger zone, so perishable foods like chicken, bacon, hamburger, and eggs would become unsafe relatively quickly without proper refrigeration. We don’t know what temperature that food was at in that car for 5+ hours. Maybe it was cooler, maybe warmer. Maybe it was safe and maybe it was a hazard. It’s all moot now, since I replaced it all in order to return the zen of our family gathering back to some level of tranquility. Maybe I should have done the Solomonesque thing and had batches of old and new cooked up and marked as such, but I sense that may have ended in an even bigger family food fight.