I Confess. In 2020, I Washed the Potatoes. With Soap

It was April, 2020. The coronavirus was sending people to the hospital by the tens of thousands. It wouldn’t be long before the refrigerated morgue trucks would be lining up outside the hospitals. Covid-19 was everywhere. It could get you. People were afraid.

My memory of the pandemic year — the fear it engendered — has faded. It’s a little like a memory of childbirth — you remember giving birth, but you don’t remember the pain.

In 2020, I Washed the Potatoes — With Soap

And so, lately I’d forgotten how anxious we all felt during the covid months — until I came across an old post in which I confessed that I was soaping down the groceries as they came into the house.

I’m not kidding. I washed the apples. I washed the potatoes. I washed the romaine.

We were avoiding shops and stores. We were getting our food delivered — but how safe was that food, I wondered? Had the cheerful — brave — delivery person breathed his covid-19 germs on it?

Radical measures were called for. And in my case, washing down the fruits and vegetables that arrived at our door was not too radical. If a twenty-second wash was good for the hands, a twenty-second wash must be good for the food we ate.

The pandemic experts were saying that there was no evidence that the corona virus was borne on food. But I didn’t believe them. How is the slick skin of an apple different from the slick surface of a railing or a doorknob? Why can’t the virus spread to the next person when an infected shopper picks up an apple at the grocery store and puts it back in the bin?

The food experts were also warning against using soap on your fruits and vegetables, as soap could irritate the gastro-intestinal tract and even cause symptoms resembling coronavirus infection.

But I wasn’t listening.

I was washing the bananas. I was washing the apples. I was washing the potatoes. I was washing the romaine lettuce.

And I don’t mean rinse the lettuce in cold water. I mean sink it for the prescribed twenty seconds in a tub of warm water and dishwashing liquid. Agitate. Rub. Then rinse in cold water so Jon doesn’t notice that the lettuce has wilted a bit since he last saw it.

“Some of the lettuce was a little slippery when I made the salad tonight,” Jon said over dinner.

“I washed it with dish soap,” I said.

I was sheepish, but only a little.

Jon did not scold. He took to indulging my microbe phobia. He knew he’d be locked down in this house with me for weeks, and he was picking his battles. Cabin fever was a thing during the pandemic. A little soap in the salad? He let it pass. A few days later, when I dunked the baby potatoes in their dish soap bath, I was careful to give them a good rinsing.

Incoming groceries weren’t the only items that got the sanitizing treatment back in the day. I once slathered an envelope with sanitizer for twenty seconds before mailing it to my daughter — just in case I was exhaling coronavirus microbes and they were mean and tough enough to survive the three-day trip to Christina’s mailbox.

As for incoming mail — it got opened and sanitized on the hood of my car before it came into the house. That led to a habit that I have to this day. On my way into the house from the mailbox, I stop at the hood of my car, sort the mail and toss the spam into the recycling bin before it has a chance to come inside and clutter up the house.