Refrigerate after opening..... Do you?

The wife bought a "Butter Bell" so we could have restaurant quality spreadable butter. You cram a stick of butter into the bell, add cool water to the bowl, and place the butter filled bell into the water. It makes the best spreadable butter 🤤 as easy to spread as creamy peanut butter. You are supposed to change the water everyday to keep the butter fresh. Fast forward a month or so after the awesomeness of our great find was taken for granted and we lapsed in maintenance. We found out that NOT changing the water out daily can make the butter spoil and really ruin the taste of a delicious homemade preserve. 🤮

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Living by myself I don't go through a stick of butter fast enough that I feel safe doing it but growing up we had a butter dish on the table all the time. If you used the last of the butter then you better also be the one that opened up a fresh stick from the fridge and refill the butter dish with it. Yes I didn't think to ONE TIME ONLY. I don't remember that butter ever going bad. Maybe this is a difference in salted vs. unsalted butter? I've never looked up the point of difference in the two.
 
Since this popped up on its own ;), I'll reply.

Most things go in the Fridge just to make them last longer, especially here in a warm and humid climate. However, butter we have been leaving out in a covered butter dish without issue. It's consumed before it can go rancid. I hate wasting food, so it hurts a bit to toss some things, but safe is better than sick.
 
Growing up in a sub-tropical environment with the insect life that came with that my Mum was paranoid about putting everything in the fridge! 🤣

I must confess I still do it to this day.......🫣
 
I'm in the "use-by dates are only suggestions" camp. Especially for canned & hermetically sealed foods. I inherited a "waste no food" attitude from my parents who grew up in the Depression, so in my world it's a moral failure to throw food out. Which raises havoc when you're a one-person household, but also a fanboi of Costco and their mega size vittles. It's a constant race between me & the bacteria to see which of us is quicker at eating down any given dish's leftovers.

All that to say that I've eaten sealed yogurt that was more than a year out of date (it's just pre-soured milk anyway, right?), cut/scraped/scooped small mold colonies off solid/pasty/chunky foodstuffs & eaten the rest, consumed MRE's twenty years past due, dug in with breakfasty relish when I forgot last night's dinner leftovers on the counter, and I think on one occasion ate what must have been leftovers from a Roman Empire cavalryman's saddlebag. I didn't eat some 17 year out of date beef jerky only because it failed to reconstitute by soaking in water for several hours. Oh well, you lose every once in a while in spite of your efforts.

My approach to refrigeration is to cool liquid'ish foods in a thin stainless steel bowl on a cooling rack with a fan blowing on it, periodically stirring the contents of I'm in the kitchen, before popping it into the fridge. Cools quick enough that it's typically ready to go by the time I eat the meal & wash up the dishes.

Another consideration is that salt, sugar (in spite of being a nutrient), and spices in foods can act as preservatives. So David's jam on the counter sounds safe enough, especially given that he eats it up in fairly short order.
 
Bean porridge hot,
Bean porridge cold,
Bean porridge in the pot nine days old.

Opa told me that before they had electricity, and therefore refrigeration, his mom would cook a roast on Sunday and leave it in the covered roasting pan on top of the stove until it was all et up (sometimes taking all week). He said it wasn't ever a problem as long as you got the roast/contents hot at least once a day. Having done the same with roasts, soups, stews, frijoles, et al I can confirm he was right. Not that I ever doubted him.
 
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