I'm on the subway juggling my purse, book, and a number of shopping bags, one of which contains a gorgeous batch of farm-fresh Cortland apples (my very favourite!) from the very last farmer's market day of the year.
The train pulls into my stop, I stand up, and somehow a few of the apples spill out of my bag and start rolling around the subway floor.
Three or four extremely friendly, helpful, and well-intentioned people swoop into action, gather up all the dropped apples, and quickly put them back into my bag before the doors close.
So now my bag of the very last of the very best apples of the year contains some apples that have been on the floor of the subway. I don't want to eat the subway floor apples, but I don't even know which ones they are! (And they've probably all touched now!)
How can I disinfect apples that have been on the subway floor so they're safe to eat and not at all psychologically yucky?
7 comments:
You could put on rubber gloves and scrub them with very hot water and dish soap.
Would that work for you?
I didn't see this before my internet went out, but in the meantime there was an article in the Star about exactly the same thing, saying to rinse them in vinegar and then wash them in soapy water like dishes (which I had no idea you could even do with fruit!) So I did that because, like, it was in the newspaper and stuff.
The weird thing is, psychologically, they seem dirtier to me for having been on the subway floor than if they had fallen on the ground outdoors. Even though the subway floor is cleaned from time to time, and outdoors isn't.
Not weird to me. I mean, it's the subway! Ewwwww.
Vinegar, great idea. Natural disinfectant.
Did the Star article really mention fruit rolling around on the subway floor?
No, it was just hard-core cleaning of fruit in general, for if you're paranoid about pesticides or germs or bacteria or whatever. I'm a huge fan of pesticides and normally blasé about germs and bacteria that don't have a psychological presence, so I normally just clean fruit enough to remove any actual dirt that's on it. But this case required stronger measures, and a logical multi-step process that includes elements I wouldn't have thought of myself and was printed in the actual newspaper did the trick.
I love that while your internet was down, the paper newspaper came through.
And this when I'd been considering the benefits of stopping my paper newspaper subscriptions!
It's like you deciphered an ancient scroll.
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