THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Thursday, January 19, 1995             TAG: 9501180046
SECTION: FLAVOR                   PAGE: F2   EDITION: FINAL 
COLUMN: Morsels 
SOURCE: Ruth Fantasia 
                                             LENGTH: Medium:   55 lines

QUIRK OF ALUMINUM POTS IS ENOUGH TO MAKE YOU ILL

MOM ALWAYS said, ``Don't leave open cans of vegetables in the refrigerator.''

But she should have warned us about leaving some pots in the refrigerator as well.

As Beth, a Norfolk reader, discovered, storing vegetable soup in the cooking pot overnight isn't always wise.

She reheated the soup and fed one of her children. Then, as the soup became hotter, ``it looked like it had taken on a life of its own,'' she said. ``I threw it away, but the child who had eaten it became very ill.''

After the incident, Beth realized she had used an all-aluminum pot to cook the soup.

Shirley Corriher, an Atlanta-based food chemist says, ``Cooking in aluminum usually doesn't pose a problem unless the contents are acidic. She probably had tomatoes in the soup (Beth did), and foods with a high acid content will dissolve the aluminum.''

Simply cooking the soup in the aluminum pan wouldn't have dissolved enough metal to create a problem, Corriher says. But leaving the soup in the pot overnight allowed the acids to dissolve more of the metal.

Aluminum pans aren't recommended for cooking white sauces either, Corriher says. ``They will discolor the sauce.''

Should we throw out our aluminum pans?

No, but if you cook acidic food in aluminum, remove it from the pan right away.

Guide to game

A recent Morsels item mentioned a cookbook for hunters. Then we received ``A Dunderhead's Guide to Game Cookery'' by Ellen Berg.

Berg worked as a sous chef at the Colington Cafe on North Carolina's Outer Banks, but gave up that career to make waterfowl carvings.

But she still likes to be creative in the kitchen, she says. Her husband, a hunt club owner, gives her plenty of opportunities to cook game.

She published the 46-page guide last summer. For a copy, send $9.95 plus $3.95 shipping to: Ellen Berg, 1631 Village Lane, Kill Devil Hills, N.C., 27948. North Carolina residents add 6 percent sales tax.

Can we talk?

Finally, after months of practice, I feel secure enough driving on the information superhighway to let out my log-on.

So now, computer-oriented readers can e-mail me at fan(AT)infi.net. Just be patient with me if I crash and burn a few times. by CNB