Re: Refrigeration question - apple dessert with high sugar content

Hi Bob,
This group should be as good as any. I find there is not much traffic 
here so any post that is fruit related, in any way, fits.
I don't have an answer. I have been known to keep pies out at room 
temperature for a few days. I've never had any ill effects from this but 
that doesn't prove anything.
Obviously, any food will keep longer if refrigerated. Personally, I 
wouldn't think twice about keeping apple crisp at room temperature for 
several hours. I could be wrong.

Steve


Bob Travis wrote:
> Please let me know if this is not the right newsgroup for this question.
>
> My mother-in-law says that due to its high sugar content an apple crisp
> dessert does not need to be refrigerated for the first day after cooking.
> She says that if she made it just after breakfast and serves it just after
> supper it will be safe to eat that evening and it needn't be refrigerated
> until after it is served after supper.
>
> I said any cooked food will start harboring bacteria just as soon as it
> begins to cool, so she should have refrigerated it shortly after breakfast
> and after supper she should only have warmed up what she anticipated we
> would eat and kept the rest refrigerated.
>
> Well she got all huffy and picked up her apple crisp and went home. My
> thinking was, "Good riddens," but my wife asked me if I was absolutely sure
> that it needed to be refrigerated and if there was any truth to her mom's
> comment about the apple crisp's high sugar content making no refrigeration
> necessary the first day after cooking?
>
> I said, "No, I'm not sure and maybe she really knows what she was talking
> about." My wife then said, "Well, you better find out because if you are
> wrong and she is right then you owe mom an apology." I said, "Okay, I'll get
> on the web and find out."
>
> I looked and looked and the best I could find was that apple crisp keeps for
> three days WITH refrigeration. I could not find anything which specified how
> long it could go without refrigeration on the day it was prepared.
>
> I am hoping someone here knows or can tell me where to look. I want to know
> who was right and who was wrong.
>
> Her mom's explanation is she grew up is the country where almost nobody
> refrigerated anything. I mentioned this to my wife and said to her, "Do you
> have any idea why you get stomach aches about five times more often than I
> do?" She said, "No," and I replied it is because you eat about five times
> more of your mom's cooking than I do and she never refrigerates anything
> until it is time to go to bed." I said this isn't necessarily bad because
> medical researchers are now saying that because people's bowels are less
> active than they were fifty or sixty years ago people are gettin a lot more
> colon cancer than they once got many years ago, so these frequent stomach
> aches are not nessarily a bad thing.
>
> Thnks for a your opinion on this subject.
>
> Bob