Sometimes, I really like channeling food bloggers. They make scrumptious meals with TONS of step-by-step pictures (in case we don't know what a bowl looks like) and can get you enthusiastic about the most mundane of things like...oh, I don't know, brussel sprouts (which my housemate actually cooked the other day and I had them for the first time... and they weren't so bad! Why do they always get such a bad rap, like the epitome of disgusting vegetables? But I digress.)
On today's food blogging episode, I will enlighten you to a skill set every tropical-living missionary needs to learn...chopping the pineapple (later, I'll walk you through The Mango). I actually earned lots of "cool foreign points" when I sliced a pineapple like this in Australia for my hosts.
The Pineapple
Step 1: Get the pineapple...this may include wading through a spikey garden to wrestle it off the plant...(Signs of ripeness vary between kind of pineapples, but generally you want a nice pineapple-y smell and golden shades in the skin.)
Step 2: Remove the pineapple's crown by twisting it off the fruit. Proceed to plant the crown in the garden for more pineapples.
Step 3: Slice off both ends of the pineapple so that it sits upright on your cutting board.
Step 4: Now here's where it gets interesting: Slice off a chunk of the skin. If it's a Highlands pineapple, then the eyes aren't very deep and you can easily take the entire skin off with one fell swoop--like you see in this first photo. (Proceed slicing the skin off all the way around the pineapple.)
But, if it's a Lowlands pineapple, then the eyes are deep, and even after you have taken all the skin off, it still looks something like this:
Step 5: In order to cut out all the eyes, you'll need to make diagonal wedge-shaped slices from top to bottom of the pineapple, following the spiral of the eyes.
Step 6: You're almost there! Cut your pineapple into delicious slices (aren't they pretty?) and enjoy!
On today's food blogging episode, I will enlighten you to a skill set every tropical-living missionary needs to learn...chopping the pineapple (later, I'll walk you through The Mango). I actually earned lots of "cool foreign points" when I sliced a pineapple like this in Australia for my hosts.
The Pineapple
Step 1: Get the pineapple...this may include wading through a spikey garden to wrestle it off the plant...(Signs of ripeness vary between kind of pineapples, but generally you want a nice pineapple-y smell and golden shades in the skin.)
Step 2: Remove the pineapple's crown by twisting it off the fruit. Proceed to plant the crown in the garden for more pineapples.
Step 3: Slice off both ends of the pineapple so that it sits upright on your cutting board.
Step 4: Now here's where it gets interesting: Slice off a chunk of the skin. If it's a Highlands pineapple, then the eyes aren't very deep and you can easily take the entire skin off with one fell swoop--like you see in this first photo. (Proceed slicing the skin off all the way around the pineapple.)
But, if it's a Lowlands pineapple, then the eyes are deep, and even after you have taken all the skin off, it still looks something like this:
Step 5: In order to cut out all the eyes, you'll need to make diagonal wedge-shaped slices from top to bottom of the pineapple, following the spiral of the eyes.
Step 6: You're almost there! Cut your pineapple into delicious slices (aren't they pretty?) and enjoy!
