In laws playing it fast and loose with refrigeration - who is right?

[spatchcock]

Went to stay with the in laws this weekend. Got up on Saturday morning and went to have some toast with jam. MIL points me towards the cupboard. In the cupboard there are four pots of jam - three are mouldy and one has just been opened. I cleared out the green jams and after using the unmouldy one went to put it back in the fridge but MIL says 'Oh no - it goes in the cupboard.' Right, ok... not going to argue, not my house or my jam.

At midday, FIL comes back with the shopping. Everything gets tidied away except for a joint of pork, which gets left on the side. A few hours later MIL and I are pottering about in the kitchen and I see the pork is still out and ask if I should put it away. "Oh I've got it, don't worry," MIL says. She puts it in the (unlit) oven in preparation for the Sunday roast.

I go to bed thinking about the pork, imagining the bacteria multiplying endlessly and wondering if any of it could possibly harm my incubating (31-week) PFB. My own mother is absolutely fastidious about refrigeration to the point of obsessive. A ten minute trip to the supermarket necessitates several chilly bins and a game plan. Bacteria is Satan and Mum is a missionary of hygiene. I thought I was nothing like her (I eat things off the floor), but something has obviously rubbed off on me because it takes me a while to get to sleep.

The next day the oven is turned on at midday - 24 unrefrigerated hours after the pork first made its appearance in the kitchen.

I ate it - MIL cooked the shit out of it so any bacteria (along with any nutrients) were probably killed off. MIL has also raised three strapping sons. One of them, my DP, says he can't remember any incidents of food poisoning, and that meat has always been treated this way in his house.

I find this bizarre. It seems completely abnormal to me to leave meat lying around for a whole day in warm spring temperatures but DP thinks I'm overreacting.

So who is being unreasonable? Me with my bacterial awareness or MIL with her germy breeding grounds?

I think people in the UK are overly paranoid about refrigeration and the likes... BTW, we play it fast and loose with nutella in our house, it's either in the fridge or cupboard, we can't decide.

I come from a tropical country, where it's humid and hot all year round, perfect breeding ground for bacteria. I have a cast iron stomach and put it down to good genes.

My mum comes to visit a while ago. She cooks a pork stew one night, we all ate it. Leftover was left in the pot on the stove. I thought she forgot about it. About to have dinner the next night, she said 'Har, leftover pork still to eat'. Proceeded to heat pot up, as all had some leftover. Leaves pork for a second night and repeat the following night, I politely declined! No wonder I have a cast-iron stomach!!!! LOL!

And don't get me started on 'sell by' dates, a way for food producers to make more money! I regularly feed DCs 'expired' yoghurts... My MIL is worse... She defrosts food for my DCs and instead of heating it up to 'boiling' to make sure all bacteria is dead, she only heats it up to warm-ish so she can feed the DCs straightaway... Well, they are not dead yet so I turn a blind eye to that but .

BUT OP you are pregnant so I think you should take extra care when it comes to what you are eating. Leave the risk-taking for when your PFB starts to pick stuff up from the floor to eat!

Well yes, saggy - jams are called preserves/conserves for that very reason. However - they do last much longer in the fridge.

Fellatio, even I would have heaved a bit at the sight of that cream cheese!

We didn't have a fridge when I was growing up, I was around 16 I think when my mum got a fridge at home, even then I am not sure what she actually put in the fridge apart from ice cream in the freezer part

Opps sorry Saggy - see you've already made the 'preserves' point! (must learn to read thread)

I would have not have eaten the pork,no way!!
I keep jam/pesto/horseradish in fridge once open,thought that was pretty normal?!

You're all bonkers.

Jam goes mouldy when it's contaminated, not when left in cupboard.

Meat needs to be brought to room temperature before cooking to ensure the blood is evenly distributed throughout (this is also why you rest it before serving). Given that oven is a sealed environment then 24 hours in there is fine. Nearly every dinner party I give has meat cooking at gas mark 1 (appx) for at least 24 hours before being given a final blast.

I imagine none of you have seen meat hanging, or curing in real life, much less done the hanging/curing yourself? Cold storage is great if you have enough of it, but most of us lob the stuff in larders and sheds for days. If I had the larder I dream of I would never keep cheese/eggs/butter/meat/fruit/veg in the fridge. Fridges are for the more important things (wine)

Saggy - yes, AND they often have extra preservatives in now as well.

DH wanted to throw away some out-of-date parma ham once. Insane. Especially as its official shelf life was a few months, it had been matured for a year beforehand and it was only a fortnight or so past the use by date.

My PILs won't throw things out, and use the fridge as a receptacle for any leftover food - but then never eat it. Last time we were there she roasted a chicken on Saturday night. We left the following Saturday, the carcass was still in the fridge (not covered). Along with a single boiled potato in a bowl (not covered). I can't stand it, I have to get in there and throw stuff out. I found some takeaway naan bread from 10 days previously (it had gone really hard) and some 2 month out of date chicken nuggets.

I'm not that bothered about best befores to a certain extent, and I have cut mould off cheese / scraped it off jam before.

But I do think you shouldn't mess about with meat.

Even if you scrape off the visible mould on jam/cheese/whatever, the invisible to your eye mould spores will still be there.

Many people happily eat that mould on cheese! And the jam underneath the mould will be fine, no spores.. it is only where oxygen has got to it that the mould appears.. the rest will be absolutely fine

Well yes, Fellatio, they do last longer in the fridge, but the ops MIL was not U to not put the jam in fridge!

Ah, x-posts - I see all the other hard-corers have already responded!

Killing bacteria by cooking food isn't good enough. Some bacteria produce toxins as they grow. Cook the food and kill the bacteria, but the toxins are still there to make you ill. This makes sense otherwise you would be able to cook off food and it would be ok to eat, but this isn't the case. Your MIL is crazy to risk her unborn grandchild like this.

This might be very naive (as I am veggie and cannot declare to know anything about meat!) but on the continent, don't shops sell meat hanging from the ceiling (i.e. nowhere near a fridge)?

OOPS. cross posted with Fellatio.

but a piece of ordinary meat won't incubate enough bacteria to make enough toxins to make you ill in 24 hours.

Oh, come on, this is ridiculous!

Yes, bacteria multiply on meat left at room temperature. What do you imagine those same bacteria do inside the fridge? That's right, they keep multiplying - just more slowly. The fridge is not a magic germ-killer: if it were, nothing in the fridge would ever go mouldy, would it?!

yanbu my son has just suffered 8 days of diarrohea from food poisoning & is now on antibiotics as it didn't clear itself, he has had severe stomache cramps the whole time too. We still can't work out what he ate but think it was something at a school buffet. My friend, a nurse said she saw the worst case of food poisoning ever recently after someone ate unrefridgerated pork. If I were you I would definitely not eat there while pregnant.

YAbu, this country is not warm enough to cause bacteria to grow at such a rate as to make you ill in 24 hrs... It was sealed, in the cool oven. Normal practice I suspect for your MILs generation.

Oh and Jam should not be kept in a fridge, it ruins the flavour and it's a PRESERVE...

Every day, people in affluent countries throw away tonnes and tonnes of perfectly edible food. Every day, people in poor countries starve to death. Children survive from picking through rubbish dumps for food and scraps. So what if the pork sat out or the jam wasnt in the fridge?!

Saggy - chill, I ate the pork and didn't complain and no one threw any meat away. Would you eat strawberry jam that had turned khaki?

One of you must be my SIL.

I think that if you have a fridge then why not just pop in the meat to slow down the bacteria multiplying.

We had a turkey soup after christmas at MIL's house one year and DH, DS and myself all had terrible sickness.

YANBU

My DH made our dog very poorly by feeding him chicken that he had left out, after it was cooked, for 24 hrs. He cooked it really well again and insisted that would kill off the bacteria. Mum was staying and she and I both told him it was a bad idea but he gave it to the dog and the poor dog was sooo ill.

I always refrigerate jam, ketchup etc as it says to on the jar/bottle. My PIL don't and the ketchup at their house is always much darker and tastes funny to me, although not obviously mouldy. I wonder if it is more about preserving the flavour rather than avoiding mould.