Thursday, April 19, 2012

Pineapple Adrenalin!

 Some people get thrills from cliff-jumping or parachuting or crossing swaying rope bridges over a gorge of death-churning water. Me? I got those little bolts of excitement jumping down my spine the other day as I sat clicking through Cooks.com.

Hehehe. One recipe after another had me laughing maniacally as I read through the ingredients. One can crushed pineapple…


Me? I didn’t need a can of crushed pineapple. Sitting on my kitchen counter, their spiky yellow skins bursting with fragrance, was not one…not two, but THREE gigantic pineapples, all fatter and taller than I could grasp with a single hand.

A can indeed! Take that, oh so-called “tropical” recipes!

Despite how commonplace they are in this country, I still am in awe that they exist…and even more, that they are sitting on my counter.

After all, the place that I call home resides in the northernmost US state of the Lower 48. We’re the place that can get snow flurries in May and ice storms in September; where a native Minnesotan can read the temperature by how fast her eyelashes freeze or how long it takes for her hair-icicles to melt rivulets down her back while sitting in church. We have dairy cows and pine trees, prairies and apples…but every pineapple we taste is tossed and bruised in plastic bins, shipped across the country, slapped with a price tag that makes fruit aficionados cringe, and arriving on our doorstep in a pale sort of yellow that reminds me of babies with jaundice.

But here, I scour libraries and databases for recipes that feature the pineapple more prominently than just a cute little ring in a fruit platter.

Why? Because I have my very own pineapple patch in my backyard.



And, what’s more, they are now coming ripe. Soon we will have a bumper crop of fresh, golden, juicy, sweet, glorious pineapples! (And not only pineapples—it won’t be long before our trees bearing grapefruit, lemons, and guavas, along with the blackberry patch, yield up their goodness.)

Oh yes, be jealous. Be very jealous.


It’s enough to give anyone an adrenalin rush!

What about you?
Before coming to PNG, I never dreamed of pineapples in my backyard. What are some favorite things that you have encountered in your back lawn?