Holiday feast

The holiday season has begun and with that comes thoughts of family gatherings and holiday meals.

Let’s be careful not to spoil the good times with sickness brought on by negligence in the kitchen. Even if you don’t enjoy the family gatherings, food poisoning is not the way to get out of it early.

This article contains a few holiday food safety tips from the Department of Agriculture, the Food & Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Auburn University’s Food Systems Institute.

There are four main concepts to apply to all food safety situations —clean, separate, cook and chill. The points made below reinforce these concepts:

• Refrigerate perishables and leftovers within two hours. The faster you can get them to under 40 degrees, the safer. Leaving foods on the counter or table all afternoon for family members to “graze” is not safe.

• To chill leftovers faster, put them in smaller containers.

• Check your refrigerator temperature; make this a new holiday tradition. Refrigerator should be between 32 and 40 degrees Fahrenheit and your freezer should be below 0.

• Don’t overcrowd the refrigerator. It needs to circulate the air to keep everything cool.

• Don’t thaw on the counter (or outside). Thaw in the refrigerator or in cold water, changing the water out every 30 minutes.

• Cook your turkey to an internal temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit at the thickest part of the bird. If you stuff it, the stuffing must reach 165 degrees also. This can overcook the turkey, so think about skipping that extra step of stuffing the bird and cook your stuffing in a casserole dish.

• Ham should be cooked to 140 degrees Fahrenheit if it is marked as coming from a USDA inspected plant and is labeled as fully cooked. If the ham is smoked or fresh, cook it to 145 degrees Fahrenheit. If there is no USDA inspection, cook it to 165 degrees.

• Meats and poultry, soups and stews, cold salads like chicken, tuna and macaroni will be OK for about four days in the refrigerator. So if you can’t eat it all by Sunday, freeze it before then.

• Reheat leftovers to 165 degrees.

• Pecan pie does not have to be refrigerated. Of course, there’s never any leftovers anyway.

— For information on topics related to the home and garden, contact any office of the Alabama Cooperative Extension System. The Limestone County Office is located at 1109 W. Market St. in Athens. Office hours are 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. For more information, call 256-232-5510 or visit www.aces.edu.