Well, Nancy, the reason I asked is because growing up my dad was a
microbiologist / quality control supervisor at a food plant so we were
always more germ conscious than most people. When my wife's mom grew up her
dad was a farmer, they had no electricity, and for personal hygiene they
used an outhouse. In the 12 years we've been married both my wife and her
mom complain of stomach aches far more often than I do. Her mom even wonders
why her poor dog is always getting sick too and it never seems to dawn on
her that maybe it's because she will prepare a meat dish for him early in
the morning and never even think about refrigerating it until late in the
day. And God forbid I should say anything to her, she'd get all huffy like
she did tonight and let me know she didn't even have a refrigerator when she
was growing up. I didn't want to poor vinegar on the wound and ask her how
much time she spent in the outhouse.

That is why I thought possibly her "high sugar" explanation might be
plausible, but I thought I'd better ask someone that knows more about
cooking and refrigeration than I know.

All I can tell you for sure is my wife and I lived with her mom the first
two years we were married and after we moved out and began cooking more of
our own meals I rarely got stomach aches and associated problems again, but
when we lived with her mom they were a fairly regular occurrence. Every time
we sat down to dinner I felt like I was playing Russian Roulette. Will
tonight be another one of those nights in the john, or is everything going
to be okay this time. The general rule was if we went shopping together and
fixed dinner soon after we got home, usually everything was okay. But if we
were having leftovers the best I could do was say a prayer and hope for the
best.

Bob

P.S. There is something about elderly people and salt too. Just as they are
getting to the age where high sodium intake should be a consideration, it
seems they use about 5x more salt than seems reasonable, so much salt that
even if you're eating the brown off her fried chicken it tastes more like
the crumbs at the bottom of a very salty bag of potato chips.



"Nancy Young" > wrote in message
...
> Bob Travis wrote:
>
> >
> > My mother-in-law says that due to the high sugar content an apple crisp
> > dessert does not need to be refrigerated for the first day after
cooking.
>
> I'm not sure it would even cross my mind to refrigerate it. I'd
> eat it without a problem. Bet she's done that for longer than
> you've lived and ... she's still here.
>
> nancy