No worries about that. The bacteria that produce botulinum, clostridium botulinum, are anaerobic. They die in the presence of oxygen. That’s why sealed cans are most at risk of having botulinum. If they don’t get heated up enough to kill all the spores after they get sealed, then they go just hog-wild in the oxygen-free environment.
Fun fact: Honey (usually) has LOTS of clostridium botulinum spores, but it is slightly acidic, and very high sugar and low moisture, so they don’t grow and propogate in it (and therefore don’t produce the toxin.) Your stomach acid is high enough acid to destroy the spores when you eat the honey. Unless you’re an infant…they don’t have acidic enough acid to always destroy thespores, so that’s why all those baby books say never, EVER give honey to a baby.
Rancidity happens with food oils sooner or later - some sooner rather than later. Most people are advised to keep dark sesame oil, flaxseed oil (and flaxseeds), and various other specialty oils in the fridge. If you don’t eat much peanut butter, you might feel better keeping it in the fridge too.
And then there’s the topic of hot climates and your peanut butter texture preference. If I found my peanut butter was a thin, melty drizzle, I’d probably try to keep it cooler as well.
Yeah, while reading the OP, I wondered WHAT you were doing for the past month while all your food was going bad… out of town with the French-Canadian Foreign Legion? Living in Akron on a short-term Witness Protection program? Paddling up the Nile in a quest for Obama’s Original Sanskrit Birth Certificate?
Naw, my roommate and I are just stay-at-home genetic engineers. We believe in indoor polyculture farming and our dinners are part food, part science, part art!
There is no emotion quite like the one you feel when you stare at a bagel and realize it is staring back at you.
I grew up in a warm FL household that never kept the peanut butter anywhere but in the kitchen cabinets, and I recall many a peanut butter-laden food that used peanut butter bought several years ago. I have never gotten sick, so if you run out of room in your fridge, it wouldn’t be amiss to keep the peanut butter in the pantry or your kitchen cabinets.
Just adding that I’ve never heard of anyone storing peanut butter in a fridge. My opened thing of PJ is sitting in the cabinet right now. I might go have a spoonful, actually.
