Things you were shockingly old when you learned

jfc i am glad i wasn't drinking something just now

Lol @ that Neanderthal / sic assist and slam-dunk

totally needed that guffaw tonight :)

it's not yellow enough. the ass should be brown-yellow. if it is too brown (& smelly) it usually is still eatable but will taste more like canned pine-apple. sweet but not sour anymore. my fave pine-apple is sweet and sour (refreshing) at the same time. it gives me a kind of sparkling kick on the palate.

Have only bought pineapples pretty rarely even though i love the taste and they do seem to have been turning up pretty cheap recently. Which may not be a great sign re fair trade etc.

One of my relatives worked on a plantation that grew them i Kenya but my visit to the plantation was pretty short and several decades ago.
& they do seem to be on the shelves noticeably in a pretty narrow colour range. maybe all the good ones go early on or something. LIdl stacks unopened boxes in its reduced price area so you do get a bit of a chance.
BOth bananas and mangoes do ripen off the plant. I think banana skins even give off a ripening gas that is useful for ripening other fruit. I don't think it worked right on pineapples , certainly not in the way that you'd want it to. May mean it rots closer to the skin.

Have heard taht grilling pineapple can make it sweeter. Also the core is edible and contains roughage and nutrients and things.
Also heard one way of checking ripeness is testing how easily the leaves pull out.
Also if you're in teh right climate growing pineapples from the cut off tops is supposed to be reasonably easy but takes a great deal of space. Similar way to growing new veg from cutting off the top near where the leaves grow out, placing it on a saucer in water etc but I think you need something like a 6 foot spacing between the individual fruit with pineapple.

Plantains seem to be sold as green in most places over here. Which takes about 10 or 12 days to ripen in a paper bag or whatever.
ONly appear to be a couple of places that sell them yellow/brown to black.

& bananas sold commercially in the West seem to be pretty much seed free, probably involves grafting of plants etc like most apple trees do. Growing apples from the seeds you find in the fruit leads to crab apple like fruit several years down the line.
A banana seed for growing a plant is considerably larger than the black dots you see in a commercially sold fruit.

How easily do the green shoots (are they leaves?) pull out the top? If they come away easily, it's a sign of ripeness I believe.

The fact that blew my aged mind about the pineapple is that in almost every other single language in the world apart from English, it is called ananas, or some slight variation thereof.

I learned that once you can easily pull one of the leafs off a pineapple it's ripe. I found this to be true. Color blind proof, too

x-post :)

I think it's fairly clear by this stage that my pineapple has not passef the ripeness test. :(

I don't blame myself as it came in a delivery, so I had no chance to check it beforehand.

The only question remaining is what I do now.

yeah I think the representation of a pineapple you get in UK education etc is the colour of the fruit you showed. THink i was actually surprised to see a pineapple represented as orange some time over the last year.
Well shows how much the colonists know innit? Cos taht was more my source on growing up.

I presume taht if i was driven around my uncle's pineapple plantation I must have been offered some pineapple but that would have probably been something like 4 decades ago.

Have been using some pineapple for the last few weeks in the stir fry/stew I make as the week's food. Alongside mango, plantain and black banana. Not a big fan of eating the mushy ones on their own, bananas like. I think they probably offset the chillies etc I bung in.

The only question remaining is what I do now.

put it on a pizza, best place for it.

Blender, ice, and booze

CAaL otm

the pineapple is that in almost every other single language in the world apart from English, it is called ananas

I had a zoom meeting with a Britishes the other day where he improvised tags for our software using fruit, including "ananas".

"That's what you'd call a pineapple!" he told me while I wondered how I could call 9-9-9 internationally on account of this man having a stroke.

eat it nevertheless, maybe try to grill it as stevo suggested

hey now

WTF

Ewwww

A marrow is just an old courgette

I learned shockingly late that you shouldn't stick a Q-tip into your ear canal (even though the package clearly states not to). Now I've cut back to about once a week, and boy is it satisfying.

Ugh oh god if I only cleaned my ears once a week it’d be horrific.

The side of the Q-Tip box lists a bunch of uses but conspicuously *not* sticking them in your ear. Because you should never stick anything smaller than your elbow in your ear.

Pineapple bidet?

B-side to "Raspberry Beret?" I've had more problems with pineapples getting overripe than being underripe. I had one that even started audibly hissing and oozing on the counter. By the time they make it here I think they're often pretty far gone.

I'm a recovering qtip addict. Recently had temporary hearing loss from it which spurred me to kick the habit.

I always point the shower head into my ears and taht seems to keep the canals pretty clear. Had to have them syringed a few times years ago.
Probably find out this isn't the best idea but does seem to work. Thankfully had a decently high power shower for the last few years.

xxp I assume taht's why they tend to ship them under ripe in my experience.
Assume its also people who don't know as much about the fruit controlling the distribution. BUt not sure how long it would take a pineapple to turn if it was set up for shipping closer to optimum ripeness. Just have heard taht that is something people do with other plant products so assume it is something they do wuith these too.
But of course different plant products act in different ways.

I just clean my ears out with rubbing alcohol every once in a while, but it's really only a problem if I'm going through a period of extensive headphone usage.

What is it with the "elbow" bit of the qtip revelation? It's the most irritating "well actually" around. Is there a utility of an elbow in the ear? What approximately elbow sized things are people putting "in" their ears as a matter of course? Why isn't it just "don't put anything in your ear"?

I think the joke is that you literally can't bend your arm to even try to fit your elbow in your ear, but it's funny to watch people try.

Pretty good. That much was obvious to me, so I had the missus put her elbow in my ear which was hardly edifying.

What's wrong with a good tongue in the ear anyways?

Actually, are elbows even a thing?

When I was a teenager, the end of a qtip came off while I was cleaning my ear and I had to go to the hospital to have it removed.

(Unrelatedly) I once had to have an ear syringed and the doctor said that using qtips can exacerbate a blocked ear by inadvertantly jamming the wax in there.

Yeah, it's like a ramrod.

I assume my hearing loss was due to blockage. I just used over-the-counter liquid fizzy stuff that cleared it out.

soda water?

carbamide peroxide

yeah I used to use special ear drops from the store due to my psoriasis and constant earwax buildup.

there was one summer where I basically couldn't hear out of either ear due to solidified balls of earwax

Worth mentioning that youtube is full of impacted earwax extraction videos and they are all extremely disgusting.

I find it hilarious that there are so many people who have not the slightest idea how to safely and properly use a cotton swab to gently wipe gunk out of their ear.

kind of sad, but mostly lol

Cotton swabs are illegal in the UK for a reason. Canada will follow suit next year.

whole countries of people who can’t be trusted with q-tips

THEY WERE ORIGINALLY CALLED “BABY GAYS.” Polish inventor Leo Gerstenzang was struck by the idea of a mass-produced swab when he saw his wife stick cotton balls on both ends of a toothpick and use the makeshift tool to clean out their child's ears.

my doctor got angry if he heard I aws using Q-Tips, cos he told me i was mashing wax deeper into my ear.

Yeah the assumption seems to be that what everyone does is take the swab and try to fuck the shit out of their ear canal with it.

And apparently many people do exactly that!

I don't think it's a technique issue, it's just not a great thing to do to your ears

their being made illegal is presumably due to the hugely wasteful aspect rather than the danger to ears

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/XyqSa7Hhi9khb5cGHSwyU-DadIU=/0x0:2040x1360/1400x933/filters:focal(857x517:1183x843):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/56698297/main_1200_copy.0.jpg

Landfills nationwide struggling to find the room to store tiny pieces of cardboard and cotton