[RougeUnderoos]

Can I eat that varnish on the outside of a cucumber? I usually do, but lately these things seem to have an extra thick coating of whatever the hell it is they put on there. Do y'all eat that stuff?

And another question -- how do you people wash your vegetables?

I'm a bit of a germ-o-phobe, and winter always reminds me of snotty noses and sneezing, and then squeezing tomatoes at the grocery store with your disease-ridden hands.

I do the old fashioned method of "rinse them under cold water and then chop 'em up", and that's what the internet basically says to do (along with other helpful tips like "don't buy mouldy produce"). It just doesn't seem like enough.

Onions, carrots, potatoes -- you are going to scrape or peel off the top layer off anyway. But tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, green onions, celery... a lot of this stuff has been handled by strangers and I eat most of it raw. It gets my Germ-O-Phobe Senses Tingling.

I don't know if I've ever been ensickened (new word!) by Sally Housecoat's filthy hands having handled the tomato, radish and cucumber I bought and threw in my salad, but I'm suspicious.

I don't know what else to do though. Do you do something else?

Fun Fact: the stickers on the fruit and vegetables we buy are made of "edible paper", but you should remove them anyway because if you don't, "the spot under the sticker won't be cleaned", according to some advice giving website. Funny piece of advice I thought -- "don't eat stickers" seems like reason enough to me to remove the stickers, but someone felt they needed to back it up with some sanitary logic.