Food Safety 101: Best Ways In Keeping Food Safe

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With regards to food, safety is a major concern. For many people, the kitchen is the heart of the household. It’s the room where family and friends bond as they cook food. However, it’s also a place where possible food poisoning creeps around.


When you eat or drink something, you can get food poisoning if it is contaminated with any number of bacteria, viruses, or parasites. Common symptoms include diarrhea, vomiting, and fever. These infections are minor and go away on their own. Sometimes, it’s so bad you have to go to the hospital.


You can take steps to your kitchen to protect yourself and your family from getting sick in the first place.


    1. Clean Way of Living

      Everyone in your household should clean and wash your hands with hot, soapy water for at least 20 seconds before and after handling food. You should also wash your hands well after using the bathroom changing diapers and handling pets. You should also clean your countertops and other surfaces often. Bacteria can spread throughout the kitchen and get onto cutting boards, utensils, sponges, and countertops. Wash your kitchen utensils after preparing each food item and before you go on to the next food.

      Use plastic or other nonporous cutting boards. These boards should be run through the dishwasher after each use. You can use paper towels in cleaning up kitchen surfaces, or cloth towels but wash them

    2. Things must be separated

      When handling raw meat, poultry, and seafood, keep it away from ready-to-eat foods. Detach it also from other foods in your grocery shopping cart and in your refrigerator. When they mix, it’s called cross-contamination. Never place cooked food on a plate that just held raw meat, poultry, or seafood.

    3. Embrace the Heat

      You need to cook food to the right temperatures to kill the harmful bacteria.

      You can use a clean temperature on measuring the internal temperature of cooked foods. Make sure that meat, poultry, casseroles, and other foods are cooked all the way through.

      Here are a few specifics on that:

      • Cook roasts and steaks to at least 145 F.
      • Whole poultry (chicken, turkey, duck) should be cooked to 165 F.
      • Cook ground beef (hamburger) to at least 160 F.
      • Ground chicken or turkey should be cooked to 165 F.

      Don’t use recipes in which eggs remain raw or only partially cooked. Cook eggs until the yolk and white are firm. Fish should flake easily with a fork.

      When cooking in a microwave oven, make sure there are no cold spots in food where bacteria can survive. For best results, cover food, stir and rotate for even cooking. If there is no turntable, rotate dishes by hand once or twice during cooking.

      Bring sauces, soups, and gravy to a rolling boil when reheating. Heat other leftovers thoroughly to 165 F.

    4. Keep It Cool

      Refrigerate foods quickly because cold temperatures keep harmful bacteria from growing and multiplying. Set your refrigerator no warmer than 40 F and the freezer no warmer than 0 F.

      Some other tips:

      • Refrigerate or freeze perishables, prepared food, and leftovers within 2 hours
      • Never defrost food at room temperature. Thaw food in the refrigerator, under cold running water, or in the microwave.
      • Divide large amounts of leftovers into small, shallow containers for quick cooling in the refrigerator.
      • Don’t pack the refrigerator full. Cool air must circulate to keep food safe.
    5. Throw It Out If It Smell Unpleasant

      We naturally hate to waste food but don’t be tempted to hold onto food if you aren’t sure about it. Toss it out if:

      • You don’t know how long it’s been sitting out
      • It doesn’t smell or look right.
      • Raw food has touched cooked food

      It is very important that people must understand how their behavior and activities contribute to the safety of food. From processes on the farm to practices in the kitchen, human activities play an important role in food safety. We face many challenges in keeping our food safe. Safer food promises healthier and longer lives and less costly health care, as well as a more resilient food industry. Establishing and maintaining a safety culture should always be considered as a long-term investment and not a cost.

Painting and Decorating is Fun!

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As we all know, painting is a practice of applying paint, pigment, color or another medium to a solid surface. While decorating is making something look more attractive by adding extra items or images to it. But how will we know if an image is called a painting? Even a hand print of paint in a canvas is already a painting and it means a lot. It depends on your mood, feeling, and emotion. Every single detail of your image has a meaning. And how will you know if you are decorating something? Changing and adding images and items in a room or a landscape/portrait are considered as a décor.


Painting is not that easy especially if you wanted to catch the eyes of your audience but you don’t have to be worried because painting is not just all about the beauty of the image but the message of it. Decorating with the sense of expressing the theme needed to give impact visually where warmth and coolness will either be the base of intensity. Interior wise, painting has been the combination of art and passion. Decorating is more on change and adding. Perhaps decorating takes a lot of time especially you need to have a concept in your decoration.


Painting is a lighthearted pleasure that whatever you wanted to express with your emotion deals and comes with it. Decorating is also a lighthearted pleasure but there are a lot of things to decorate like a person, cake decoration, room decoration, Christmas decoration and a lot more. Expressing one’s emotion is sometimes through art, thus painting and decorating is one of it.


Painting and decorating might be on of your career. Career is a particular peregrination through learning, work and other phases of life. There are a lot of ways to delineate a career and the term is used in a variety of ways.  Pick the best reason why you have to choose what you really want about your career because the only constant in this world is change.


The average person can expect to change careers at least once in his or her lifetime. One reason is that sometimes people don’t make well-founded decisions when choosing an occupation. For example, they neglect to do a self-assessment that will help them learn about their interests, work-related values, personality types, and aptitudes in order to find out what occupations are suitable based on those traits.

Painting and decorating might be one of your careers and always remember painting and decorating is fun!


Lead With A Heart!

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Leaders will often look at the intellectual attributes of being a great leader. They point to great strategy and winning against the competition, but leadership is also about matters of the heart. Leaders should be mindful, authentic, and caring.

 

Heart-Centered Leadership simply means being compassionate to lead others by having the courage and wisdom to lead with authenticity, transparency, humility and service. They understand that people have the need to be valued, respected, listened to and involved. Upon recognizing and honoring the human element, heart-centered leaders possess the wisdom and capacity to positively convert any organization and run extremely successful and profitable businesses. Anyone can be a heart-centered leader if he or she has a daily commitment and determination to practice certain core principles.

 

The root or basis of these principles is what we call “the power of the human element.”  Two things are required to tap into and unleash the human element.  The first is your ability to listen or, even better, your ability to learn how to listen. The second is your own willingness to clear personal difficulties, in other words, your own story and organizational obstacles that get in the way of this deeper listening.

 

Off the top of your mind, what 3 things are different about a heart-centered leader? First, the focus is to serve the people that you are leading, not the other way around. Second, a heart-centered leader tells the truth.  If you are not able to provide information when asked, you must be willing to explain why you aren’t at liberty to share that information. Lastly, a heart-centered leader comes to understand, asking the right questions instead rushing to judgment and assumption.

 

When I talk about leaders having a big heart, I am talking about these factors:

  1. You are human and if you want to lead others more effectively, they must see you as such. You make mistakes and you have weaknesses when you let others see that and recognize it in yourself, people will see you as more real.
  2. There is a difference between sympathy and empathy and it is important here. Sympathy is a feeling of care and understanding for the suffering and feelings of others. Empathy on the other hand, understands what others are feeling because you have experienced it yourself or can put yourself in their shoes.
  3. Attitude isn’t about logic, it is all emotion. Most leaders restrain the importance of their attitude, but are the first to lament that the attitude of their team isn’t positive.
  4. Build relationship people want to be led by people they know and like. If you want to lead more effectively, find ways to connect with and get to know more about more of your team members.
  5. Ask yourself this question; are you more likely to follow someone you trust, or someone you don’t? Hint – others are just like you so trust matters, a lot. They want to follow someone they trust, and that can be you.

Ultimately, a heart-centered leader leads from principles, virtues and values.

Work Safely At Heights

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Most of us are afraid of high buildings and we call it “Acrophobia“- fear of heights. I remember when I was still a kid; I got panic and felt very nervous when I was like falling from a high building. But nowadays, we can see a lot of high buildings and construction industry businesses. We notice men are working at heights, but sometimes we think, are these men working safely? Are they using safety gears and equipment?

 

Falls regularly happen from roofs, scaffolds, ladders, trucks and story floors or in the mines or dumps. Falls from less than one meter away may result in serious injuries and damages to people such as fractures, spinal cord injury, violent shock and brain injury. The possibility risk of severe injury or death from a fall increases pointedly, so we need to make sure to follow and use safety measures when working at heights over two meters.

 

Here are some helpful things you need to apply when working at heights:

  1. Where possible to remodel the workplace or the work tasks to lessen the need for people to do the exertion of work or part of the work at height.
  2. When work must be done at height, make sure that the work is done from one of the following:
    • A higher work stage or convenient support harness with secure handrails
    • Use of travel control systems
    • Fall arrest systems such as safety harness, industrial safety net or catch platform
    • Step platforms
    • Ladders

Also in travel restriction and fall arrest systems and the connected waterfronts must be planned by a skilled person. Any person using such systems must be given the proper training and direction.

  • Make sure storey floors, storage areas and any other areas that are planned to be retrieved have safety access with well-retained stairs or ladders and secure handrails and toe boards around the perimeter of a surface.
  • Any storage area including plaguing, dropping or the roof space of an office area within a factory must be planned accordingly for the intended loads.

Consider the following when using of ladders;

  1. Use a step platform ladder, where possible as they offer a larger and more constant work exterior than ladders.
  2. Always keep three points of contact when arising, sliding or standing on a ladder.
  3. Do not use ladders on balconies, terraces or other areas that will make them the possible fall distance for the user of a ladder.
  4. Make sure workers don’t;
    • Stand higher than the second step below the top plate of any ladder
    • Use ladders when using a tool that has to be operated with two hands or require a high degree of force.
    • Ensure ladders are placed squarely on firm, non-slip surfaces. Secure ladders by tying them to a support at the top and/or bottom. Alternatively, have another person ‘foot’ the ladder.
    • Inspect ladders regularly. Repair or replace ladders where rungs, steps or treads or top plates are missing, worn, damaged or loose.

Working at heights seems like we are putting ourselves at risk. It is important to know every safety measure and must follow the instructions from the person who knows excellently in the field. A harmful event is everywhere, so we must always be aware of any circumstances. Keep in mind that being safe requires braveness!

Balanced And Healthy Work Life

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People by nature are having different types of behaviors. We are likely to conform to a group that leads to the normative influence. Having a balanced life can bring a sense of fulfillment and meaning. Some of us think that having a balanced life means spending the same number of work hours as you do on personal activities. Always remember that life can bring a sense of fulfillment and meaning when there’s happiness. Whatever we do in life, it echoes in perpetuity.


Developing healthy eating habits can be easy, tasty and inexpensive. Organic food is non-artificial and it’s now being introduced by farmers. The only thing to do is to learn the basic needs. We don’t need to buy expensive foods to satisfy ourselves. We are sometimes deceived by illusions and savvy marketers can easily manipulate our preferences. But there are things that we cannot control over which we are powerless. There are only a few things that we truly have control with and one of them is the spirit of independence.


There are people who maintain a positive focus in life, no matter what is going on around them. Our focus lies on the job, academic performance, finances, and stability. We seldom take advantage of the opportunity to escape from the hustle and bustle. Take things slow and take care of yourself. We want to work hard for the future with brighter colors. But do we ever ask ourselves if we’re happy? Maintaining working relationships start with good people skills. Learn to appreciate your job because it can go a long way in setting up your long-term career prospects. Even if your current job isn’t perfect, it is something for which you should be thankful. If we don’t appreciate our own work then why would you risk for something you don’t deserve.


Be grateful for everything you have and be humble. Life is a gift from God. It is not something that we own. Challenges live within us; we only have to be brave enough to face them. People say fate is something beyond our interdiction. We only live once, so we have to make the most out of it. Enjoy the things that surround you. Be thankful for another day, for it may not come again. For life is an excellent way to dive into the day with a positive demeanor. Allow yourself to be a beginner as no one starts being outstanding.