hikermor ... think you're right. It probably all depends on exactly what you're eating, and the order of how you prepare the food & drink. The trick is to somehow get the plates/dishes degreased as you move thru' the process.

A couple of random thoughts about clean cookware. I try to pay attention to the lessons learned by various elite military forces - because those people are trained to work in many parts of the world. I have noticed that the soldiers belonging to the SAS (Britain) are very careful to keep their plates/dishes/cookware scrupulously clean after eating meals. They will carefully scrub off every tiny remnant of food from both plates and eating utensils. Apparently this is because of the growth of bacteria under tropical environments. So they must have had some bad experiences - to have learned this lesson.

Also, I happen to be reading a book right now about the US Marines during the war in the Pacific (WW2). Some of their soldiers got badly dehydrated under the intense tropical heat, but the supplies for their battle got bogged down on the beachhead (heavy enemy fire). So they were intensely thirsty. When they finally got water, it came in old oil drums that had been converted for water storage purposes. Unfortunately for the poor Marines - their own men didn't do a great job of cleaning out the oil drums. So the water for their canteens was contaminated by a layer of machine oil on top - and that's all they had to drink in the battle. Nauseating! So they also learned an important lesson the hard way ... do a super good job of cleaning all contamination from old containers.

I seem to have strayed from the original topic of coffee cups. Ohhhh well.

Pete #2