In the matter of butter:

When I was a kid, I saw butter dishes always left on the counters or tables of houses (not in ours, though), and, ever since then, I've wondered about the tradition of leaving butter out of the fridge.

Anybody know anything about this?

duh! I have a butter bell which I love. It stays soft & spreadable, but doesn't go bad.

I did understand the reason for it. Duh, indeed.

Butter gets rancid, though, so I'm wondering about it, that's all.

How long does your butter stay out? All day or all the time?

i have a butter bell so it stays perfectly fresh.

Never heard of a "butter bell," but I think I'll order one tonight.

Thanks for the tip!

but after a google, it's on my "thrift store treasures to find" list

thanks for the tip! :bounce:

you'll never find it in a thrift store. People just do not get rid of them. You'll have to bite the bullet & pay retail. I know, just shoot yourself now.

I got mine from Baker's Catalogue.

:hi:

so I can live with that :bounce:

like this one for $2

http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-CERAMIC-BUTTER-DISH-KEEPER_W0QQitemZ7373043440QQcategoryZ1014QQtcZphotoQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

When I want soft butter, I take it out ahead of time. I like to keep it hard, too. However, I could have one stick in the fridge and one on the counter.

(as shown by my peanut brittle addiction, get your mind out of the gutter you old lefty!)

but butter ain't one of them...

my butter (real butter too, no oleo for me) lives on the counter

when it turns to a puddle of ghee with the solids floating on top (yuck). That's when I mix it with light veggie oil, a little milk, a little lecithin, and make a spread that tastes like butter but stays soft in the fridge.

but that sounds so weird. Makes sense, though.

I've made it a couple times and it works pretty well and tastes fine (to me anyway. I hardly use any butter.)

I thought you were starting one of them sex threads I keep hearing about but can never find.

No oleo in this house, either. Ever!

So, it's ok to leave it out all the time, huh?

Why doesn't it go bad? Do you know?

i go thru at very MINIMUM a stick a week usually more like two a week so with an average of 3 days on the counter it's fine

but that butter bell thingie sounds like a winner for those weeks the usage is less :shrug:

Leave it out for all 3 months of summer to find out what I mean. The smell of rancid butter gives rotten chicken a run for its money.

as long. I don't have to worry though, as my butter does not stay around too long.Oy. If only I could cut back on the butter a bit. I don't like hard butter. But in the summer it melts too fast.I have a butter bell also, bought it in a housewares store . They are neat.

My mother and I had enormous fights over this when I was a teenager. I hate committing muffin-ocide, but she was paranoid about the butter going bad. Not just tiffs, either - screaming matches, because logic told me that something that is 80% fat is unlikely to go bad overnight and at the rate we used butter... (We had a lot of arguments; butter was just one. We have very different personalities and they clash.)

So I bought a pound - with my allowance - and left it on my dresser, except when I took it to the kitchen in the morning to butter my gorram english muffins or toast.

I went through about a stick a week. The third stick was a little sour, and the fourth was rancid. So basically, it took 3 weeks for the butter to go bad.

As an adult, I've never had a stick last more than 3 or 4 days, so I don't worry about it (and I use a bell, anyway.)

Now, we used salted butter, and I still use salted for things that aren't baking. Alternately, I'll occasionally buy Kerry gold or Plugra, but those I freeze.

I have no idea how long it takes for unsalted butter to go bad, but I do know it will acquire bad flavors in the fridge in about a week.

which is 10 days more than nothing at all :shrug:

and how big a hassle is it to change the water all the time? and and and

i've got about a million questions on the butter bell thing.....

We buy either Irish or Italian butter blocks (8 oz, I think), and we immediately put them into a sealed glass container. Since we rarely put butter on bread or anything else, it's fine in the fridge, or a few minutes in the microwave on "warm" if it needs softening.

The butter bell just looks like another thing on the counter, and I don't want that.

I got my answers, about how long it takes to go bad. My work here is done.

Now, wanna start a sex thread?

I like it because the cats can't figure out how to knock off the lid. (Not that we have a counter climber anymore, but when we did, she was determined to have at the butter. I swear it wasn't the ketamine that killed her, but her poor little clogged arteries from the several pounds of butter she'd consumed.)

I can also be stupid and leave it on top of the toaster oven when I'm pre-caffeine in the morning and not have the butter melt all over the dish. In the summer, before I turn on the AC, it keeps the butter soft but not liquid; in the winter, when we have the heat on low, it keeps the butter soft but not too cold.

I replace the water about once a week - it's covered, so it's not like the water gets nasty or anything.

Realize I ran my experiment in January, and the room I had in that house was the one farthest from the furnace, and in the basement to boot. AND we were going through a "let's not feed the beast" period in my parents' political and economic lives, so the only time I was allowed to have my heater on was when I was studying or for an hour before bed or when I got up. So my room stayed about 55 all the time. Had I ran the experiment in July, things might have been different. (Lessee... that was the year I was in chem, so that means that was Snowflake, and that would have been the year that the White Mountains got hit with 23 inches of snow and record cold. And we wonder why my mother moved back to Mesa....)

and bacon grease and even crisco, if i forget to replace the lid.. He's the scrawniest cat ever (still wearing his "kitten collar"....he's 3 yrs old) so I guess he has a grease deficiency:)

We leave our butter out too:)

Though one of our survivors is also a tiny little thing (5.6 pounds according to her vet visit last week), Simone never weighed more than 5.3 pounds and always wore the baby collars.

Where she put it all, I don't know.....

Your experiment gave me the answer I sought. Thank you.

Ever try Wolferman's English Muffins? I give their gift baskets as Christmas gifts to my publisher and my agents, and they're nice to me for a whole year......

http://www1.wolfermans.com/eoneCommerce/Shop

Thanks again, and I'm sorry you and your mother had such a tough time.

(Not seriously - she's a champ. Publishers are just suffering from the same race to the bottom that all other media industries are in right now... )

Adolescence is hard for lots of families. We got over it. I grew up, and learned that distance is a good thing. She still drives me crazy because she's the least assertive person I know and can't give a straight answer because she's afraid to offend or *gasp* express an opinion, but at least I don't have to live with it until it reaches passive aggressive screaming.

I figured I'd ask Old Leftie privately, but it appears we have more than one writer in this thread.

I write romances, esp. erotic. (Ooops, a sex thread.:evilgrin:) I need an agent. Any recommendations?

Btw, small e-presses tend to be more honest and more open to unusual things. Of course, they're small and the $$$ isn't as good.

but I've never had unsalted butter go bad in the fridge in a week. Or ever.

Outside of the fridge, I can't speak for - I don't leave it out - but in the fridge, it's not that fragile.

As some of you might know, I make my own butter at times. And I don't salt mine.

I made a batch for a potluck the Nov 21. Brought it back home, refrigerated it, used a bit, And I just threw it out :-( Saturday (2.5 weeks) because I did find mold and some pinkish looking stuff in it.

I need to make some flavored butters for Christmas presents so I'll save a bit and keep on the counter until the spouse chews on me for why I am going this....

It doesn't hang around long enough to worry about it getting rancid. I keep it in a covered container in a cupboard near the toaster.

http://www.qvc.com/asp/frameset.asp?nest=%2Fasp%2FIsItemNumberRedirect.asp&search=SQ&frames=y&referrer=QVC&CLASSLEVEL=&txtDesc=butter+keeper&SearchClass=&search.x=15&search.y=11

I got one a while back but its up in the cabinet somewhere. In the Winter here in New England I keep my butter in a regular butter dish on the counter. It stays spreadable and doesn't melt. Just the right texture and I have never had a stick go bad. In the warmer months I try to remember to take the butter out of the fridge and let thaw a bit before I use it.

but I have all winter to find one in a thrift store :evilgrin: