Shared Kitchen Logistics

[Ra3chel]

My spouse and I are sharing a kitchen with another adult for the first time in nine years.

New roomie is awesome, and I trust her to the ends of the earth WRT FA stuff. We're keeping the house free of my major allergens--pn, garbanzo, and sunflower--but she asked if I'd be comfortable with tahini in the house, as long as she's very careful about how it's stored / what it comes in contact with. That's theoretically fine by me--sesame is a kind of borderline allergy anyway (I test positive, and because I have other seed allergies and a history of severe adult-onset FA, my allergist said he'd recommend avoiding it in general; but, for instance, I don't worry about shared lines with sesame the way I do with peanuts).

What I'm hoping for help with is coming up with logistical rules--figuring out the maximum intersection of mitigation of risk for me and culinary flexibility for my housemate. To be clear: the call on this is 100% in my court, and I absolutely trust her to stick with whatever guidelines we decide on.

ETA: If it's a factor, it'll really only be the three of us using the kitchen; and we're all a) grown-ups, and b) fairly FA-savvy.

[starlight]

If it were me personally, I'd be ok with it, but have specially designated "sesame" pans, plates, utensils, and storage containers. And wash them in the sink separately from the other dishes. And lots of hand washing, no touching everything else in the kitchen before washing hands. And if you're particularly concerned, washing the soap dispenser/sink handles afterward since she'll be touching them.

[CMdeux]

If she's willing to be "critiqued" for her technique, that would probably be THE most awesome thing ever-- that is, have her go through the motions of using an allergen in the shared kitchen, and you sit on a stool nearby and have a running commentary on good/bad/dangerous as she does that.

That will make her more aware of how contamination can happen-- which is the key thing in safely handling an allergen in a shared kitchen space.

DH can't modify as a result, which is why until recently we had no eggs in the house for cooking-- only preprepared items and NEVER anything that got HEATED.

With preprepared allergens, plastic-ware or dedicated utensils are IMO a must, and separate dish sponge, etc.

[nameless]

I've had roommates w/ nuts/pb in their own cupboards. We had processes like: on paper/plastic utensils only that get trashed...put down paper towels on the counter to catch crumbs...nothing 'heated' if I'm home (never ever heated/cooked PB)...if she needed to wash something that had nuts/pb it didn't go in the dishwasher and she used her own special 'nutty sponge' from under the sink...just being very very careful and she really really was

We did have our own cookware - which helped. Truthfully I was happy b/c she would use metal utensils in her non-stick and I didn't want my expensive pots/pans ruined

Generally - being nut/pn free was the norm, and her eating/having nuts/pb was the exception and needed the special procedures.

Good luck!

One thing to watch for is she has people over or a bf/gf over a lot...that's where a few 'oops' happened where my roommate caught her bf putting a pb covered knife in the dishwasher and also getting granola/nuts all over the counter and not cleaning up.