How long do cheeses and fruits keep?

Dear Home 911,

I  got a lot of  cheeses and  fruit baskets for Christmas, and I still haven’t distributed the ones I bought for colleagues and friends since it was crazy busy before Christmas and now they seem to be all out of town. I’m worried that by the time the baskets are sent out and actually consumed by the recipients, the cheeses and fruits will have gone bad already. What’s the storage limit for apples, oranges, bananas, cheeses and red eggs?

WILMA

On my very first Home 911 column, a colleague sent me this question: how do I know if my cheese is rotting and not just molding like blue cheese? I said if he tastes it and it makes him want to puke, it’s rotten; if it makes him want to pour a glass of chardonnay, it’s blue. He didn’t find it funny.

Seriously, most commercial cheeses have an expiry date printed on the packaging. Just make sure they won’t expire in two weeks and you’re okay, otherwise your friends will think you got them for half the price since supermarkets tend to cut the prices just as the products are about to expire. For opened cream cheese, it’s two weeks; cottage cheese, up to 30 days; Swiss and processed cheese, three to four weeks.

Once, when my husband R. and I were in Amsterdam, we bought a ton of hand-made Gouda cheese that didn’t display an expiry date (they didn’t even have labels). The salesperson told us that we didn’t need to refrigerate the cheese if we weren’t going to eat it right away, but to keep it in room temperature and it could go as long as six months. The ball cheese was wrapped in wax. The problem with keeping this kind of cheese in room temperature is that mold grows on the wax very fast (in less than a week) even if it is unopened or maybe this was mainly due to the change in temperature, from freezing Amsterdam to hot and humid Manila. Mold on wax doesn’t mean the cheese inside is rotten — just wipe off the mold with olive or cooking oil on paper towel. After we had removed the mold, we put the cheeses in the refrigerator and mold didn’t develop anymore and they lasted longer than half a year — and they were the best I had ever tasted.

As for fruits, they’ll last longer if you keep them in a moisture-resistant wrap. Some fruits are already saran-wrapped individually while smaller ones can be kept inside zip-lock plastic bags. Apples keep about a month; citrus fruits, two weeks; most other fruits, five days; dried fruits, six months. I’m sure you know that bananas, like potatoes, shouldn’t be refrigerated.

My biggest fault as a homemaker is that all too often, veggies and fruits spoil in our ref. My husband R. sometimes finds me standing there, looking at a package in my hand, trying to figure out what veggie it was that turned black and died on me this time. It always seems like a good idea to cook until you actually get home, put the stuff away and switch on the TV. I’ve had potatoes and onions that grew stems in the crisper, oranges that dried out as if an incubus sucked the life out of them, lemons that shriveled and gave up, ginger that seemed to be losing limbs, and beans that just withered away. Strangely, it’s sayote that has proven to be the hardiest. They just wouldn’t go away until you cook them.

And red, salted eggs — also a popular choice for a gift basket — how do you know when they’re rotten since they smell bad to begin with? Honey, you will know.

Of course, there are always the neighbors and street children to consider — just give everything away and you’ll make a lot more people happy.

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I Found Lipstick On My Husband’s Shirt

Dear Tanya,

How do you get lipstick off a shirt? Fortunately, it’s my lipstick on my husband’s shirt.

Anette

Fortunately for him, you’re sure it’s yours. Otherwise, you’d be talking to a lawyer instead of Home 911. Not to cast any doubt on the source of the lipstick — I do admire a wife for being a hundred percent sure it’s her own lipstick on her husband’s shirt. Before washing the shirt, blot the stain off with rubbing alcohol and paper towel. You might need to do this several times and make sure you’re blotting it with a clean section of the paper towel or cloth each time.          

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Home 911 answers questions about the home — cleaning problems, DIY projects, decorating ideas, home store resources, and things you’ve always wanted to know about but never had the friends to ask. Send e-mail to philstar_home911@yahoo.com.