el crispito

The only time that I have been sick here, it was not due to eating vegetables that have not been disinfected. But I do know that you just don't drink the tap water here, and since a lot of the produce comes from very local sources and are very fresh (I get my produce at markets, not supermarkets, whenever possible), it is likely that any cleaning it has received is with that water. At times, you'll get produce with dirt from the field on it, and you'll use tap water to clean that off. Therefore, if you clean your vegetables in tap water, you want to kill the microbes in any tap water that remains, so you disinfect your vegetables.

To do this, you prepare a solution of bleach and tap water. The bleach kills the microbes in the tap water, and it will kill those that might be on the vegetables. The formula is this: 1 teaspon (or capful) of Clorox® bleach to 4 liters of water. A gallon of water is 3.785 liters. The bottles of water you get here are labeled in liters, but they are a gallon, so you get almost four liters in these large bottles as seen above. As it's not going to kill you to have your solution a little strong, you can just use a capful or teaspoon of bleach for 3.785 liters contained in such bottles.

As long as your container is sealed, you can mix this solution up in advance for whenever you need it. Then, when you need it, you pour the solution into a bowl and then place the vegetable(s) into the bowl for two minutes, stirring it around a little to ensure complete coverage.

When the two minutes is up, you take the vegetables out of the solution. At this point, depending on what the vegetable is, I might rinse it with potable water (NOT the tap water...I have nearly made that mistake on a few occasions) to get the bleach water off. Or you can let the vegetables air dry, because the bleach will evaporate out before the water does, and will not stay behind in a solid form on the vegetables. If the vegetables are something that we're going to eat very soon or without cooking, as in lettuce for a salad, I will wash them with potable water. I have accomplished this by putting potable water in another bowl, then soaking the lettuce and finally draining it in a colander. However, now that I have a salad spinner, I use a spray bottle that I bought, spray down the lettuce in the spinner, spin it, spray it down again and then spin it once more. If the food product is like an apple, that we're going to eat later, I just let it air dry.

Should you forget the proper procedure, the directions are on all bottles of Clorox® bleach down here in Mexico. You won't find them on Clorox® bottles or on their website in the US. And there are other brands of bleach available, but you have to be sure to get one that has the proper chemicals for disinfecting surfaces, food and water. Alternatively, you can use a product they market here that has iodine in it for this purpose, but Joseph has told me that it makes your food taste funny, so I have not tried it.

It is important too to wash down any surfaces that you've used with bleach water (or a similar product) too, and for this, the ratio is one tablespoon to a gallon of water. This is not only something one should do in Mexico though; all you gringos on el otro lado should do this too in order to prevent cross-contamination with your cutting surfaces and knives. But I don't have to tell you that, right?

The question will arise, "Do you have to use potable water for boiling vegetables, or things like pasta?" The answer is no. Boiling the tap water for 10 minutes will kill the microbes, but so will adding some vinegar or lime juice. You don't have to add much at all - less than a teaspoon. If you're short on time, this can save you the time of boiling the water for 10 minutes before putting your vegetables or pasta in it. Plus, if you're going to be boiling something for more than 10 minutes in the water, you can just skip all that entirely.

And to answer in advance a certain reader's comment about how this is more inconvenient than is using vegetables in the United States, I assure you that after natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina or 8-point earthquakes, when water supplies are compromised and the most powerful government in the world can't seem to give the necessary assistance to its own citizens, despite the fact that they can spend billions on bombing other countries that have not attacked you, people in the affected areas should use this same exact procedure.

A note of thanks goes out to our friend Joseph, who taught me all about this stuff.