"pineapple" news and stories

Oh, the pineapple. What a majestic fruit. On the outside, it looks like something you probably shouldn't eat, but the inside is -- well, you know. Delicious and totally unique.

Love pineapple but hate the mess of hacking one up to get at the succulent fruit? I have a solution! And no, it's not a pineapple cross-bred with a yam, or a dish towel, or anything. It's the Vacu Vin Pineapple Slicer.

The Vacu Vin Pineapple Slicer cuts your pineapple into rings and leaves the shell intact. Click through the gallery to watch how it takes you from solid fruit to slices and the perfect booze-vessel. And then buy one for $9.95 on amazon.com.

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Several months ago, I discovered the deliciousness that is fruit spread with really good quality ricotta cheese. I discovered this by accident, during a tipsy evening with a friend when I inadvertently dipped an apple slice into the bowl of cheese. One taste and for the rest of the evening it was all we ate until the cheese was all gone.

One caveat is that this doesn't work with that grainy ricotta you get from the grocery store. You need to find the stuff that is available at cheese and specialty shops. Here in Philly, I get it at Claudio's, a cheese shop located in the Italian Market. It is super-creamy (I imagine it has a much higher fat content than regular ricotta) and when combined with fruit, becomes special in a way I am not totally able to articulate.

Last night I cut a pineapple up into spears and took it, along with a small container of this special ricotta, to a dinner with friends. It was one of several dessert options and yet was one of the favorites, because it was a change from the sweet (but delicious) baked goods. You can use your imagination to determine what other fruit might go well with it, I haven't tried it, but have a suspicion it would be fantastic with peaches and nectarines.

photo by Marisa McClellan

A few years ago I was in South Africa and stopped by the local Woolworths. Woolworths in South Africa is not the same as the US stores. It is a high end department store affiliated to Marks and Spencer in the United Kingdom, with an amazing food store inside. One of the first things I saw were these tiny little pineapples the size of large baseballs. I bought a dozen since they were both inexpensive by local rates, and with the incredible exchange rate of dollars for rand they cost me pennies. They were the most amazing pineapples I ever tasted. Sweet, but even more so, full of intense pineapple flavor. I tried to ration them out when I got back onto my ship but when I offered tastes to a few of my friends the matter was settled. They were gone within hours of leaving port. They were so good I dreamed about them off and on for weeks. When I eventually got back home to the US a few months later I did some research and found out they were the Queen Victoria breed and that until recently they couldn't be found outside South Africa, basically because they went bad so fast. Further reading told me that a few years ago they started shipping them to Europe upon occasion but they were very rare.

Last week we looked at how to make some low fat oatmeal cookies that were just as good as their full-fat counterparts – not to mention that they are better for you. This week, instead of choosing a recipe that needed to have something replaced, as the applesauce stood in for some of the butter in the cookies, the recipe is a cake that already has a no-added-fat base. Basically, instead of relying on a richer butter cake base, this version of pineapple upside down cake uses a sponge cake as the base.

I know that it has been a while since I first mentioned my pineapple plant. If you recall, I was having some difficulty growing it because I followed less-than-wonderful directions when I began my quest. Thanks to the support of several excellent commenters, I decided to give it another go. Unfortunately, after the first few weeks, it looked as though the plant might not make it. I had it potted and outdoors in a sunny place, but it was first met with unseasonable cold then a massive heat wave. Some of the leaves began to brown and I figured that I had yet another failed plant on my hands.

I failed to pay close attention to it for a few weeks and, when I looked closely yesterday, what did I see? New growth at the center of the plant! You can see the contrast between the new leaves and the outer ones in the picture.

Who knows if it will ever bear any fruit for me, but frankly I'm pleased just to know that I don't have a "brown thumb" when it comes to pineapple growing.