Back to White-ish: Soaking My Cutting Boards

Lately I've noticed that my white polyethelene cutting boards were looking pretty gross. Food stains made them look dingy. This morning I cut blackberries in half for my oatmeal and the berries left the purple stain you see on the board on the left, so I finally decided to do something about it.

Before. Not appealing!

I went online and researched ways to clean white cutting boards and found that pretty much the only way is to use bleach. I filled up both sides of my kitchen sink with enough hot tap water to cover the boards and about a half cup of bleach along with each of my cutting boards. I soaked them for about 25 minutes and then took them out and rinsed them. 

In progress. Soaking in stinky bleach. 

After soaking 25 minutes, looking much better!

You can see my results in the last picture, the smaller board on the left is definitely much whiter and almost all the stains are gone. The larger cutting board still has a little bit of stains, but it still looks way better than it did before. I'm glad I finally tried this. 

For maximum cleaning and to ensure all the bleach is gone, I put them in the dishwasher. We recently switched to the fancy Cascade complete platinum pacs, they're supposed to be the best rated dishwasher detergent, I think that's according to Consumer Reports magazine. They've been great for getting rid of old hard water deposits on the dog's water bowl and so I've got high hopes for the boards to be a touch whiter/cleaner when they get done. 

Hopefully you find this useful and maybe inspiring enough to clean your own cutting boards. Or maybe yours weren't as gross-looking as mine!   

Menu Plan: Week of January 26

Monday - I had originally planned pan-fried Rodrigo-style fish with salads and quesadillas, but Sonny D reminded me I had promised him a salmon scramble this weekend.  We probably don't want fish too often this week, so I'm not sure when we're going to have the Rodrigo fish, but I bought some fresh ingredients for it so it'll have to be soon or I'll have to find another way to use those ingredients.  I've also got the ingredients for a fennel salad/slaw, so I need to make that as well.  I don't have a real plan for when we'll eat it, I figure we'll just pull it out for lunches and dinners until it's gone.

Tuesday - Husband Jeff's parents pick up Sonny D from preschool on Tuesdays and I don't make dinner since I've got Zumba class in the evening.  For dinner on these nights I usually eat two pieces of sprouted-grain toast with almond butter and orange marmalade, light but enough protein to give me energy for class.  I'm trying to convince Jeff to come with me to Zumba class every Tuesday in February, not sure I've won him over on that, but I think it would be fun.

Wednesday - We're going to make individual thin-crust pepperoni pizzas on tortillas because we have an abundance of tortillas leftover from the Pampered Chef party I hosted last week.  Small tortillas were only offered 20-24 per pack, so we still have a lot to eat, that's why I had planned we would have quesadilllas on Monday.  Maybe I can still make that happen with the salmon scramble.  

Thursday - On Martin Luther King Jr. Day my friend Heather came over and we prepped some more meals, this time two slow cooker meals and two pressure cooker meals.   I'm going to make the slow cooker Moroccan butternut squash dish that Heather whipped up based on a similar dish.  I have a feeling Sonny D won't be excited about that, so I'm quietly planning to make him fish sticks as well.

Friday - I want to finally try out my julienne peeler to make zucchini noodles.  I figure I'll saute the "noodles" with some garlic and onion to give them flavor.  I figured I would give the guys real noodles while I tried the faux version, we're going to have it as spaghetti with frozen meatballs and a jar of marinara sauce.  We've got a bunch of petite hamburger buns in the freezer from a summer party so I'm going to turn those into garlic bread before they get even more freezer-burnt.

Saturday - I've got Core Fusion class in the morning but we don't have any other plans for the whole day.  

Sunday - Lentil soup and feta-stuffed Greek lamb burgers.  Husband Jeff says he's not into lentil soup like I am, so the burgers are mainly to satisfy him.  I need to pick up some plain Greek yogurt to make a sauce to go with them.