Katie Doyle, Girl About Town

Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2005 - 3:42 p.m.

Two words of advice.

No, actually, one word of advice and the single most disgusting thing I have EVER seen in a kitchen. And that includes restaurant kitchens and dive bars, so you know I'm talking Disgusting, with a capital D. Make you retch disgusting. But first, the advice. Because that leads into the story.

You may think one day, as you are making dinner, or perhaps after, that it is okay to put raw salmon skin down the disposal.

Do not do this.

See, cooked salmon skin, that falls apart fairly easily. For all I know, you can put that down the disposal with no trouble at all. You can put raw chicken down the disposal, and even raw beef. You can even put chicken bones down the disposal. Unfortunately, I can now attest that raw salmon skin has the tensile strength of kevlar and should not, under any circumstances, be fed into a home disposal.

You grind and you grind and you grind, and for a long time, it seems nothing much happens. Then you think it's gone, so you chase it with some lemon juice and cleanser, and perhaps a little dishwasher detergent. It's all good. Then a day or so later, especially if it's hot where you live, the kitchen starts to smell like there is something rotten in the state of Denmark, and you are smackdab in the middle of the country. It will take 2 entire boxes of baking soda, gallons of water too numerous to count, a ton of bleach-containing cleanser (I recommend Ajax), more lemon juice, and more dishwasher liquid, before you finally chase the smell away.

So in short, do not put raw salmon skin down the disposal. Just don't, people. Learn from my pain.

Now, you may be wondering how I know this. Well, you see, I made bowtie pasta with salmon and broccoli a few days ago, on Friday. This was before I came down with the flu on Saturday. But as usual, when I make dinner, the housemate cleans it up. And I thought he had. He rinsed out the pan and the plates, etc. What he did not do, which I did not notice until today, was clean up the pasta remains. Those he left sitting in the collander, which was sitting inside the pasta pan, which was sitting on the stove, with a lid over it. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess. But I notice a bit of a smell, so despite still having a 100 degree fever, I think to myself, I will clean the kitchen and load the dishwasher, and I begin to do so. But first I ran the disposal, because I thought the smell was probably coming from there, what with the salmon and all. Then I start rinsing and loading, and I work my way to the pasta pan, lift up the lid, and find the hugest mass of mold spores I have ever seen in my entire life.

It's a mushroom cloud of mold, filling the collander, and smelling more than a little rankly moldy. And it's really too big to try to feed down the garbage disposal, so I empty it into the garbage.

And that's where it gets hurl-worthy.

Because people, mold feeds. And when mold feeds, it also produces waste. And that waste finds it's way to the bottom of whatever the mold is feeding on, in the form of a revoltingly viscous fluid with a string factor of about 20 on a scale of 1 to 10.

I am not ashamed to say I retched. Three times.

And then I hit everything with a thick layer of Ajax - because we are out of bleach - and walked away until my stomach settles, because frankly, GROSS. Just, gross. Too much to deal with, peeps.

So what have we learned today? Besides checking other people's work? Don't put raw salmon skin down the disposal, and toss the uneaten pasta out immediately. And if you don't, and there was very much left and it's been hot, baby, just throw the whole collander away. You'll be glad you did. Trust me.

Peace out,
Katie

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