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| July 30. It's 11:06 a.m. It's 101F outside and 100F inside. Can you imagine your house that temperature? We run the fans a lot. Fortunately, the refer is still going strong, keeping the pineapple cold. |
I’d
heard before about choosing a ripe pineapple based on the ease with which a
leaf can be plucked from the center of the head. But this knowledge has never
been of much help to me in terms of choosing the best time to cut open this
fruit. Sometimes I’ve been lucky, but more often than not, no matter how that
leaf is to pluck, what I get is either not ripe enough or too ripe.
That
was then.
Now
I no longer fret. I buy a good-looking pineapple in the store, one that is more
green than not, bring it home, and cut it up. It’s usually a bit tart or a bit
bland, not quite ready for eating. I put it into the tupperware and into the
fridge where, surprisingly, this fruit will continue to ripen at a good clip.
Two
or three days later, I pull out the now refreshingly chilled and perfectly
sweet pineapple.
In
the same vein, we’ve learned to use our fridge to increase the lifespan of our
avocado supply. We love avocados, but how long can you enjoy them aboard when
in the tropics and away from grocery stores? We’ve gone a month.
We
used to buy them hard and green and then they’d be ripe after three days. Then
we’d stick them in the fridge and get a couple more days out of them—but no
more than that. Like bananas, ripe avos never seemed happy in there.
But
then we discovered this: hard green avos will live happily at the bottom of the
fridge for as much as 25 days. We stick a bunch in there, removing two or three
at a time as needed, to ripen as normal. In this way, we plan to enjoy a batch
of fresh guacamole at the end of our future Pacific crossing.
So
pineapples and avocados are taken care of. Now I’m off to solve a more
important food problem: how do we stow ice cream without a freezer?
--MR
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| Big afternoon thunderstorm coming, our view from the La Paz anchorage. We are seeing this every day now. Sometimes they pack quite a punch, in terms of wind and rain. |
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| And this is how summer in the Baja feels. Fortunately, when the beer is gone, I've got the next best thing: cold, sweet pineapple. |
Thanks for the advice. I'm not that great at picking out pineapples. I have been experimenting with preserving a cut avocado. I had read that chopping up a small piece of red onion, placing it in a small air tight container, placing your half avocado on top and sealing the container week preserve it for 5 days. Apparently,
ReplyDeletethe gases released from the onion keeps the avocado from browning and going
bad. Today is day 4 and it's still green and looks as if I just cut it. I used a freezer Ziploc bag instead of a container.
For ice cream, freeze dried. expensive but it'll last a while.
ReplyDeleteMy HVAC at home broke down during winter, so this summer, temps in the house has been as high as 91 during the day. I can feel your pain.
Cold pineapple does sound good right about now.
I can tell you from experience that refrigerated avocados lasted our entire passage to the Marquesas from Mexico! It was SUCH a treat as we ran out of our Mexican favourites. But then, wait until you guys discover the Marquesan Pamplemousse (out of this world Asian variety of grapefruit), even your farts will smell sweet! haha Hugs to the family!
ReplyDeleteYowza, that's HOT! Offset only by humidity in the ninety percent range, I'm sure. Meanwhile, we continue to have a strangely cool summer. Caden remarked that it was going to be really hot tomorrow - "almost 90!" How soon we forget how summer usually is around here.
ReplyDelete