"zuuum" > wrote in message
...
>
> "Sheldon" > wrote in message
> ups.com...
> >
> > Von Fourche wrote:
> >> Ok, I would like to buy a fresh pineapple to make a Pina Colada. A
> >> tropical drink book I have says I can use the juice and the fiber from
> >> pineapple crushed in a blender.
> >>
> >> My question: how do I go about preparing a pineapple to crush in a
> >> blender to use in a drink?
> >>
> >> Do I cut the thing in half and dig out the inside of the pineapple?
> >> You
> >> don't throw the whole pineapple including the outside of it in a
blender
> >> do
> >> you? It's the insides I need to use, right?
> >>
> >> How do I get the juice and fiber out and in the blender? Just cut it
> >> out
> >> and toss it in?
> >>
> >> I've never bought a pineapple before so that's the reason for this
> >> crazy
> >> question. I would love to make a Pina Colada using a fresh pineapple.
> >
> > Unless you live in pineapple growing country you are far better off
> > using canned juice... pineapples sold in US mainland markets are not
> > fully ripe and never will be... pineapples once picked do NOT ripen.
> >
>
> No kidding. Never had a ripe pineapple until I moved to Hawaii. They are
a
> totally different experience when they are fully ripe before harvesting.
IF
> they were shipped ripe, you'd have pineapple brany by the time you ate it.

Bull - lived and vaction in hawaii (Kauii and Maui), worked with grocers and
Dole, have friends who still work for Dole, done shipping out of there.

1) Most of those roadside sellers get a couple boxes from Dole and set them
on the shelf for a few days to turn and then sell it to tourists who think
they are "the real thing" "ripened in the fields". (That from roadside
seller friends on Kauii - next time you get a pineapple at a stand, eyeball
out back for the Dole cartons - and see the dates.)

2) You assume they ship stalk-on pineapple by boat? If you ever had sent
anything commercial out of Hawaii, you would know that for decades it's been
cheaper net, and far faster, to ship a box of perishables as an air
container than by shipping by other methods.
Box 'em in the fields, put the pallet of boxes from the field into the
container on the road truck, load it on the plane in its container slot, and
chill them in the air "for free" by setting the cargo bay temp appropriately
and moving controlled outside air through the container's filters. Field to
air in as short as 4 hours.

You can get pineapple from the field to Minneapolis shelf (under 16
hours) faster than you can get it from the field to the shelf on most of the
roadside stands in Hawaii - At some upscale stores in the states, they
are on the shelves in their stores before grocery stores in Hawaii even get
them in their back door (deliberately and contractually, in many cases)
- that 16 fours proudly stated to me by shippers and others.

3) If you ever did any farming, you would know how utterly foolish it is to
say that pineapple juice in the cans is ripe from the field.
Twenty thousand pineapples in a field do not ripen all at once, they
ripen as a bell curve - a few early, a few late, etc. - and you don't
hand-choose perfectly ripe pineapples unless you want to go broke from labor
costs - you harvest based on sampling and probability and base it not on
ripeness but rather on maximum juice from the product, minimal acceptable
loss, least labor cost, etc. It's a business, not an exercise for diletantes
or romantics.
You get canned pineapple juice just to the green side of fully ripe, with
pressed missed greens and skins juiced in with it.

4) Shipping time is money in the grocery business, be it meat or fruit or
seafood - e.g., seafood today gets into upscale midwest groceries as fast or
faster than it gets into the fish market in Boston - (cleaned/fileted and
iced and into the small container on the trawler and then onto the truck on
the dock before the trawler motor is barely off, up in the air on an early
am cargo plane out of Logan, and on Minneapolis store shelves by 8 am -same
day as it was caught.)
Stalk-on pineapple does not sit on a boat on ice for weeks waiting to be
handled and rehandled.
And it sure as hell doesn't turn to "brandy" or ferment, unless you leave
it on the shelf for weeks past ripe, until it turns all brown and sags.

Especially alcohol derived from sugar and yeast, alcohol from a green
relatively sugarless fruit that allegedly cannot ripen and create sugar.

5) Is not the definition of "ripen" - the changing of the pulp area
surrounding the propagation mechanisms into sugars, sugars which will
attract propagating vectors?

If that change to sugar on the counter is not ripening, then what is.

nuff said -
I will ripen my pineapple on the counter here and on the counter on Kauii
and fully enjoy it,

and you buy your "ripe" juice and eat green pineapple and pine for Hawaii
where the roadsiders ripen it for you on their shelves.



> Oddly, I find the low-acid variety even more distastefull when over-ripe.
>
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