Properly Picking Perfect Pineapples

Few people enjoy fresh fruit more than me. Produce managers around here probably cringe as I (literally) pick through their displays, examining each piece of fruit before it gets placed in my bag. Living in NE Tennessee, you can only imagine how "fresh" the fruit is before it arrives at our local Krogers. As I was shopping for pineapple this morning, a young woman looked at me curiously as I picked what I thought was the best from the selection before us. She grabbed one, shrugged and said, "They're all the same, aren't they?" I gave her a quick lesson in pineapple picking and of course that light bulb over my head went off. You know, the one that radiates "Blog this, blog this!" from within. Regardless of what the cartoon lady in the flouncy skirt says, it's not this (this is only an advertising tag): It's not the smell, the firmness or the coloration: It's not the pretty stalk or the greenery: It's the fact that the little designs on the outside are round all the way to the top. If they aren't round all the way up to the greenery it's not a ripe pineapple! Simple, huh? Yes, I know I could have said this at the start of this post but what fun would that have been?