To go buy a grocery item entails driving to a giant depressing mall, parking, entering a giant depressing supermarket where whatever you want is at least two miles away down an unflatteringly lit aisle, scanning your items yourself at the checkout in a snit of frustration, locating your car in the giant lot and…then driving home in traffic.  Any sane person would compulsively refrigerate just to avoid trips to the store.

Homegirl is right.  And the funny thing is that it’s the more procesed products that will stay safer kept outside the fridge (Hellman’s will be fine; homemade will spoil).  Personally, the reason I keep foods like butter, jam, cheese, peanut butter, ketchup and other liminal foodstuffs outside the fridge is because I don’t like eating them cold, and I certainly don’t have the presence of mind to remove them from the chiller an hour before I want to eat.  Plus, the idea of eating five-year-old ketchup kind of repels me. 

Although I may keep cheese in the garage and butter under a bell, I’m not entirely anti-technology.  Rumblings of a European refrigerator idea that has home cooks logging dates on leftovers and leaving them in the freezer until a warning light reminds them of imminent expiration has me excited about the potential for sustainable technologies that really help a household out.  My aunt executes the same idea in a lower-tech way, with a list magneted to the fridge mapping out the contents of the freezer.  When the beef stew’s climbed to the top, it’s time to eat it. 

Nathalie Jordi's appetites keep her bouncing between between County Cork, New York, London and the French Alps.  When not slinging curd or interviewing farmers, she writes for Travel&Leisure, Conde Nast Traveler, Gastronomica, and her blog at www.autobiogeography.com.  Her dreams of a life spent baking, drinking margaritas, and sitting in the sun are gathering steam during her current stint as a waitress in New York City.