Dear Lynne,

My new apartment has a couple of tables/movable kitchen islands with wooden butcher-block tops. I've never used wooden cutting boards before. Are they sanitary? How do you clean them?

Peggy in New Haven

Dear Peggy,

Wood cutting boards are sanitary and I think you will like the way they feel under your knife with their subtle "give." Their looks always win me over.

Clean the wood with hot soapy water, dry, then spray with bleach water (1 teaspoon bleach to 1 quart water). Let that sit a few minutes and rinse it off.

Butchers used to clean their cutting blocks weekly with two purifiers -- salt and vinegar. They sprinkled vinegar over the board (cheap white vinegar is what you want) then generous amounts of coarse salt. After scrubbing the salt into the surface they'd leave everything standing an hour or more. Then they scraped everything away with a pastry scraper, rinsed the wood well and dried it. Doing this once a month, or when you think of it and have time isn't a bad idea.

Speaking of butchers, have a separate cutting board for anything that comes from an animal. You don't want raw meat bacteria mixing in with your other ingredients.